Effects of different interactions on students' sense of community in e-learning environment

Abstract

While e-learning is increasingly being adopted, the issue of e-learning continuous usage has been an important task both in practice and in academia. Grounded in social exchange theory, this study aims to understand how interactions influence students' sense of community and continuous use intention of e-learning platform. A total of 643 students participated in this study. The results indicate that student-instructor interaction and student-student interaction significantly strengthen students' sense of membership and influence, in turn, promoting their stickiness with the e-learning platform. In addition, student-content interaction moderates the relationship between interactions among members and their sense of community. For online learning institutions, the results suggest that managers may need to provide relevant mechanisms to encourage interactions in e-learning platform for driving students' continuous usage.