Learning and Sense of Community: A Comparative Analysis of African American and Caucasian Online Graduate Students

This study addressed how four variables used to operationalize learning and sense of community differed between African American and Caucasian students enrolled in an online graduate course. Participants (N = 97) from two sections of the course were sampled. African American students were in the minority in the mixed African American and Caucasian section, while the other section consisted of only African Americans. The results revealed that on the four outcomes measured by the study, the African American only section of the course and the Caucasian students in the mixed section represented a homogeneous subset, while the African American students in the mixed section scored lower, on average, on all four variables.