Students' Knowledge Sharing Behaviours and Sense of Online Learning Community in Online Learning Environments

Abstract

This study is conducted to find out the correlation between students' knowledge sharing behaviors and learning community feeling in online learning environments. Correlational survey model was conducted in this study. The study group is consisted of 139 participants (46 male, 93 female) who are enrolled in distance and undergraduate and associate degrees in the Distance Education Centre of Amasya University in Turkey. The Distance Education Centre uses LMS software. In this study, 9-question Personal Information Form was used to get the demographic information of the participants. With the help of a personal information form, the participants were asked about their gender, class, department, which devices they used for LMS, their weekly stay in the LMS and the number of logins to the LMS. Also, the Sense of Community in Online Learning Scale used to collection data. A total of 139 participants were reached during the 5-week data collection process. The collected data were analysed with SPSS 25.0 program. As a result, participants' sense of community in online learning and knowledge sharing behavior were high. There was a moderately positive relationship between sense of community in online learning and knowledge sharing behavior in online learning. Also, students’ knowledge sharing behaviors and sense of community in online learning environment are affected by grade level, department, number of entry and online duration. © 2021, Ozgen Korkmaz. All rights reserved.