By Scott Glassman, PsyD
Director of PCOM's Master of Applied Positive Psychology program
In Dr. Marisa MacDonnell’s Capstone course, our MAPP community of 2023-2024 was about to say goodbye to each other after a year of immersive online positive psychology learning. We decided to capture this screenshot as a bookmark for our time together.
Every picture tells a story and this one, if judging by the expressions alone, is a story of accomplishment, joy, hope, and connection. The smiles are those you would expect from a group of climbers all reaching the summit of a mountain together after a difficult multi-day climb, who finally have a chance to look out at the view and appreciate the mutual support it took to get them there.
At the beginning of the year, 12 people who didn’t know each other came together to learn about human flourishing and at the end, as you might gather from this photo, they were friends, colleagues, and fellow travelers who transcended the limits of geography to become a caring, positive community of learners—from Florida, Missouri, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
How exactly does this happen? How do strong online communities form? And what keeps them together? These are questions I’ve been interested in answering since developing the online Master of Applied Positive Psychology Program at PCOM in 2021. They are ones I continue to think about as I reflect back on each cohort’s coalescence and growth.
Is it something inherent to the personalities of those who are drawn to study human flourishing? Is it the content of the field, the communal sparks that naturally fly when studying hope, strengths, and human potential? Or is it the many hours of being online together over the year sharing slices of personal life—challenges overcome, here-and-now hurdles, and wisdom won—with intersecting viewpoints and complementary interpretations of well-being?
Or could it be the online space itself? A Zoom class often feels like a more intimate setting than a physical classroom where each student is center stage in their very own Zoom box with multiple modes of communication at their fingertips: emojis, chat streams, and open microphones.
Based on my experience teaching in MAPP and directing the program, the likely answer is all of the above. Creating a thriving online community depends on a special mixture of ingredients that work well together: vibrant and compassionate personalities, shared passion for learning about flourishing, the positive emotional valence of the content, talented faculty who love what they teach, and the amplified worth of each individual contribution by virtue of how this virtual space functions.
The common perception is that distance learning is just that. Distant. Detractors would say that closeness and connection are hard to come by through a screen, and if they are achieved, it will feel accidental, artificial, short-lived, or forced. That has not, however, been our experience in MAPP.
A close community enjoys belongingness, trust, interdependence, and a sense of comfort among its members. Research indicates that these feelings increase with time spent interacting, especially over extended periods. Shared experiences and common purpose cement investment and a sense of membership. In MAPP, we introduce our program’s mission at orientation, offering students opportunities at the very beginning to express how their individual goals overlap with that mission. Students usually find commonality in their personal values and goals, and as a result, they feel more understood and supported at this early stage. Additionally, setting clear expectations at the outset for how to learn optimally as a group online can facilitate cohesion. We are sure to cover Zoom etiquette, like keeping one’s camera on, nonverbally attending to others’ contributions, being respectful of opinions that may differ from one’s own, and minimizing side conversations over chat.
Planning many opportunities for student communication throughout the program is vital to deepening these connections. In MAPP, students are asked to practice motivational interviewing skills with their peers and provide feedback on each other’s capstone projects. Students are also encouraged to form their own group chat outside of class, which we heard was an excellent source of information exchange throughout the year. In their final practicum experience, students must meet weekly to determine slide assignments and roles in the 7-week Happier You program. Holding post-session debriefs that are supportive and strengths-based reinforces the values of partnership, kindness, and positive regard on which the MAPP community is built.
Offering easy-to-use, comprehensive online resources that assist students in maintaining a high level of personal well-being while completing assignments effectively is another important part of the equation. Virtual counseling resources and a vast online library where most journal articles are accessible are essential. Making these resources available increases the likelihood of success experiences, which in turn fuel more positive emotions, attributions, and interactions among faculty and classmates.
In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, 75% of college students in the United States took distance education courses. By 2022, the prevalence of distance learning among college students had dropped to 54%. Some have suggested that this downward trend means the race to online learning has slowed, or even reversed, with students favoring a return to in-person classroom learning. This begs the question of whether the sharp pivot to online education was born out of necessity rather than choice.
It turns out, however, that the rate of students taking online classes remained 19 percentage points higher in 2022 compared to pre-pandemic levels, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In addition, 60% of students reported after the pandemic feeling satisfied with online learning and finding it effective. One survey found that 69% of students preferred some form of online learning to in-person instruction.
A close community enjoys belongingness, trust, interdependence, and a sense of comfort among its members.
As students continue to choose online learning environments for cost, convenience, and comparable quality to its in-person equivalent, the question of what makes a good online learning environment deserves further study and evaluation. In my view, fully asynchronous approaches, or prepackaged courses with no live interaction, stand at a distinct disadvantage to a hybrid format when it comes to community building. The hybrid format, which we have adopted in MAPP, consists of weekly live Zoom classes with asynchronous components between classes like media, discussion boards, and outside interactive activities.
I’m sure there are many more opportunities to create positive interaction spaces in fully online programs, including ours, and I plan on relying on both the students and the research to guide our enhancements. One would be an optional weekly virtual meet-up and networking event, where MAPP students can connect with others outside the PCOM community who are interested in positive psychology. Another would be a MAPP listserve. If these virtual learning channels can have an in-person component, wherever the student resides, that might be the best of both worlds, a way of creating a virtual-in-person synergy that leads to a wider range of social, emotional, and intellectual thriving.
So, can online learning communities be carefully designed to promote skills and knowledge acquisition as well as social well-being? So far, from the PCOM MAPP point of view, it’s a resounding yes. One MAPP student remarked that they felt more connected with their classmates in our online space than they had in an in-person program they had previously attended. While we still have much more we could be doing to enhance virtual graduate education, it is comforting to know that we are heading in the right direction. The students’ expressions of happiness and accomplishment as they graduate from MAPP are some of the most telling signposts.
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