Increasing Sense of Community in Higher Education Nutrition Courses Using Technology.

Sense of community is integral across education formats and can affect achievement, interactivity, and retention. Factors shown to engage students and foster sense of community include the instructor focusing and directing discussions, encouraging open expression of opinions, responding to communications and feedback in a timely way, and giving the opportunity to build relationships. Technology has tremendous potential to enhance these activities at all levels of higher education.

Factors associated with sense of community among allied health students.

Over the last decade, there has been a substantial increase in online education in the health professions, as well as growing recognition that teamwork and collaboration are essential to success. While the impact of students' sense of community on factors such as course satisfaction and retention has been studied among college enrollees in general, there is little research exploring this concept among allied health students. To address this shortcoming, a convenience sample of students enrolled in a large northeastern school of health-related professions was surveyed to gather information on their demographics, curriculum and selected course attributes, perceived instructor teaching perspectives, and sense of community.