Sociograms’ Role in Enhancing Engagement

Instruments
The primary instrument was a Qualtrics survey featuring both Likert scale and open-ended questions designed to capture different aspects of the students' perceptions (Appendix 1). The survey was divided into three sections: Sense of Learning Community, Students’ Perception of Sociograms (SPS), and CoI Presences. The SPS scale, with a Cronbach's alpha of .89, was validated through principal component analysis, explaining 66.771% of the variance. Similarly, the CoI Presences scale measured students' perceptions of CP, SP and TP, adapted from Albaugh et al. (2008) and modified. Cronbach’s alpha values were .95, .93, and .97, respectively.

Procedure

Students participated in bi-weekly discussion forums within their courses. After each discussion, sociograms were generated, visually depicting the frequency and nature of student interactions. These sociograms, which used pseudonyms to protect student identity, were integrated into the course platform to help students visualize their position within the learning community and potentially enhance their engagement. Upon course completion, instructors emailed students a survey link to gather insights on their perceptions of the sociograms and the CoI elements.