The Effects of the Sense of Community on Online Learning System

In view of the importance of the sense of community in online education, scholars have highlighted its effects from various perspectives. This study argues that desirable sense of community can somehow make up for the deficiency of technical performance, enhance the appeal of online learning system, and contribute to learners’ adoption and continuous use. To prove the argument, an empirical study was carried out, data were collected from 299 online learners, and both the relations between learners’ sense of community and their satisfaction with the system performance and between the sense of community and learners’ continuance intention are studied and compared by SmartPLS2.0. It was proved that sense of community can contribute to the appeal of online learning and finally significantly work on learners’ continuance intention to use the online learning system.