Jason Bedford is the VP of Education at Class, and is a passionate educator and technologist. Having held executive positions with leading EdTech companies, he's worked hard to drive innovation with global educational partners and support their mission of equity and student achievement. Before EdTech, he was an educator at Wake County Public Schools.
Jason Bedford is the VP of Education at Class, and is a passionate educator and technologist. Having held executive positions with leading EdTech companies, he's worked hard to drive innovation with global educational partners and support their mission of equity and student achievement. Before EdTech, he was an educator at Wake County Public Schools.
Today’s college and university students want flexible learning options for communication. We have an opportunity to shift our focus from courses to student experience and the need to address interpersonal connections in online learning. Fostering a sense of belonging is essential for student success in online courses, and now is the time to integrate synchronous components that elevate the student experience. Technology has advanced to a place where online synchronous coursework and inclusive design elements lead to better learning outcomes, higher retention percentages, and improved completion rates.
Connection matters because being seen, heard, and known by faculty and peers is foundational to engagement and student success. Positive learning outcomes result from a sense of belonging in virtual classrooms—including higher academic performance, increased engagement, and a culture of growth born out of trusted educator relationships.
According to a 2019 study by Gopalan and Brady, having a greater sense of belonging is associated with higher academic performance, and persistence, and is protective for mental health. Creating this sense of connectedness in the classroom is shown to improve a student’s outcomes in significant ways.
A 2011 Walton and Cohen study found that students who are confident they belong in an environment can engage more fully in learning within that environment. More recently, a 2020 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) report observed a positive correlation, noting, “This relationship is particularly strong for students’ quality interactions with others on campus, their sense of institutional support, and their perceived gains in learning and development attributable to their college experiences.”
A student’s level of belonging in the classroom isn’t fixed, either. 2019 work from Gripshover and Paunesku suggests that teachers can change their classroom practices to demonstrate greater caring, provide more growth-oriented feedback, and consistently engage students meaningfully. These shifts can have consequential impacts on students and their learning outcomes.
Creating a perception of connectedness in the classroom takes intentional effort. To foster a digital environment that allows students to cultivate the gains noted above, it’s essential to facilitate a specifically nurtured online classroom experience, and to do that designing with our users is key. The following questions represent what students ask aloud or subconsciously as we invite them to come to class, participate, and build relevance and understanding with instructional content.
Intentionally incorporating the following elements into instructional practice ensures a connected and inclusive online learning environment for students.
Establishing the right classroom culture is essential for cultivating a sense of connectedness and belonging among students. A well-defined framework promotes a supportive atmosphere, encouraging open communication, mutual respect, and shared expectations—all fundamental elements in building a cohesive learning community that empowers each student to thrive socially and academically.
Try these tips to ensure your online course has the proper structure and norms in place to best establish a classroom culture of connectedness:
Upon setting the stage, improved interaction can be reinforced through strategically planned virtual activities. Try leveraging these active learning strategies using breakout rooms—and predefine which learning objectives are best suited for each—to promote engagement and a sense of involvement:
Enhancing students’ opportunities to have their voice “heard” can happen verbally and nonverbally. Giving ample time to consider opting in, including advanced notice, can help students prepare to engage more confidently than being put “on the spot.” Additionally, utilizing nonverbal communication for more frequent and consistent touchpoints promotes inclusivity and encourages students to participate using many available channels.
Students participating in online education should have access to the same resources as those learning on campus. Here are a few ways to ensure virtual student support is available:
Like any other aspect of effective teaching, it’s essential to have the right tools to achieve the desired outcome. When it comes to increasing student connectedness in the classroom, a virtual classroom platform offers many helpful features that are difficult to replicate in in-person environments.
Top-end online classroom platforms provide real-time engagement data educators can use to ensure they’re fostering belonging in the classroom. See how frequently each student is verbally participating by checking their talk time meters—and capture their nonverbal involvement, as well, through the number of virtual hand raises or poll questions answered.
Some students are less likely to participate because of shyness around their peers. Best-in-class virtual classroom platforms offer enhanced privacy where a student’s camera view can be made available to their instructor or teaching assistants and not the rest of the class, allowing more learners to confidently demonstrate nonverbal responses to the materials.
Not only are there plenty of remarkable features and tools online learning platforms use to facilitate connectedness in the classroom, but more are on the way. Embedding AI technology into real-time, synchronous classrooms can allow students to ask questions of a virtual AI teaching assistant without interrupting class—and educators can be made aware of query frequency as another measurement of learning engagement. These insights, as well as AI-generated session notes, can then be shared among peers to further improve a sense of belonging in the classroom.
The evidence is clear that fostering a sense of belonging in the classroom for learners has many benefits for their learning experience. While past perceptions may have seen online learning as sacrificing a feeling of connectedness in the classroom, new technology not only addresses this head-on, but real-time data actually provides insights not capturable in person.
Are you ready to see how a best-in-class online learning platform can help your educators create that valuable sense of belonging for students? Speak to one of our Class team members today, and let’s take your student experience to the next level.
Jason Bedford is the VP of Education at Class, and is a passionate educator and technologist. Having held executive positions with leading EdTech companies, he's worked hard to drive innovation with global educational partners and support their mission of equity and student achievement. Before EdTech, he was an educator at Wake County Public Schools.
Jason Bedford is the VP of Education at Class, and is a passionate educator and technologist. Having held executive positions with leading EdTech companies, he's worked hard to drive innovation with global educational partners and support their mission of equity and student achievement. Before EdTech, he was an educator at Wake County Public Schools.
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