Education Commons^™

Establishing Community In Online Courses: A Literature Review, Amy J. Pilcher

College Student Affairs Leadership

The purpose of this literature review is to examine the evolution of online learning over the last several decades in relation to student engagement. Much has been made of both the successes and failures of online learning and, consequently, much has been written to enumerate the reasons for those successes and failures. After lengthy review, a great deal of the writing indicates that the relative success or failure of a student is caused by a confluence of three factors: the student, the environment, and the faculty. Online learning is unique in that a much greater share of the burden of …