SENSE OF CLASSROOM COMMUNITY AND TEAM DEVELOPMENT PROCESS IN ONLINE LEARNING

The purpose of this study is to determine whether there is a relationship between Turkish online learners’ sense of classroom community, perceptions of success in team development process and their preferences of studying in teams. A survey instrument included the Sense of Classroom Community Scale, Tuckman’s Teamwork Questionnaire and some other items were used to collect data. The study has shown that there is a medium level relationship between online learners’ sense of community and their perceptions of success in team development process. In other words, the study suggests that sense of classroom community can be used as a predictor of success in teamwork and vice versa. It was also observed that each stage of the team development process has an influence on the following one; thus, when a problem occurred in a stage, it usually continued in the following stages. Analyses, additionally, revealed that the majority of the problems occurred in the forming stage, the first stage of the team development process.