Creating a Sense of Global Community and Belonging through Collaborative Online International Learning

A sense of belonging has been shown to enhance retention and degree completion among undergraduate students. Helping students feel a sense of belonging in a community should be a focus of today's educators. In professions, such as public health, that seek to address global issues that affect people around the world, feeling connected to a global community is becoming increasingly important. A technology-focused educational intervention was developed to enhance a sense of global belonging/community among two groups of undergraduate public health students from the United States and the United Kingdom using a 7-week collaborative online international learning (COIL) unit. Guided by the intercultural knowledge and competence rubric, one of several rubrics developed by the American Association of Colleges and Universities to assess the achievement of essential skills on college campuses in the United States and abroad, instructors sought to determine if public health students experienced a change in their intercultural competence. A significant change in students' knowledge of cultural worldview frameworks was noted (pretest M = 2.50, SD = 0.68 vs. posttest M = 2.93, SD = 0.52, p < 0.001, d = 0.560). After the unit was completed, 83% of participants reported an adequate or sophisticated level of understanding people from other cultures, an increase of 39% from prior to the COIL unit. COIL can increase students' knowledge of cultural worldview frameworks, which enhances their intercultural competence and sense of belonging in a global community. Effective learning approaches with technology should be used to enhance student belonging, retention, and degree completion in higher education. Future research should further assess COIL and technology-based learning interventions for positive impacts on belonging.