Understanding and Aligning Perceptions of Engagement, Social Development, and Feedback in Online Graduate Education

This study examines instructors’ and students’ perceptions of engagement, social presence, and feedback in graduate-level online education to understand if instructors’ and students’ perceptions about common course activities and educational concepts align. Results of this survey research show that while some perceptions are aligned, there is a large gap in the those that are not aligned. These findings offer a foundation for future research to perform a more in-depth analysis to determine what promotes engagement, social presence, and feedback in online course work.