The effect of a belongingness strategy on online higher education student performance measures

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the implementation of a belongingness strategy positively influences student performance in an online higher education environment. Belonging is defined as a student's sense of being accepted, respected, encouraged and supported in their college environment by both peers and faculty. This study's problem relates to the lack of belongingness which ultimately impedes a student's ability to thrive academically. Researchers have investigated the relationship between a student's sense of belonging and their academic performance and how the lack of a sense of belonging leads to disengagement and negative implications. The current literature is predominantly anecdotal, and we found that most studies did not conduct quantitative analyses. To address the gap in the literature, our methodology utilized student performance metrics which were assessed for a six-month period in 2021 prior to the implementation of a belongingness strategy and for a six-month period in 2022 after the implementation. The results of the empirical analysis (t-test) indicated that the student performance metrics increased with the implementation of the belongingness strategy, with all metrics having a p value of less than .05. The conclusion of this study is that students' sense of belongingness positively impacts academic performance.