University climate in distance education contexts: developing an assessment instrument

The article presents the validation of an instrument for the assessment of students’ perception of the university climate in distance education settings. Also in such contexts, students establish relationships with classmates and teachers, and feel the atmosphere, the sense of belonging to an institution and to a community of learners. For teachers, however, it is difficult to understand how students perceive these dynamics. Therefore, the University Climate Questionnaire for Distance Education Contexts (UCliQ-DE), composed of 22 items, has been developed and validated through factorial analysis and reliability studies among a population of freshmen in an Italian BA program in Educational Sciences. It was concluded that the UCliQ-DE is a valid and reliable assessment tool, and that it yields five interpretable factors: the perception of the relationships among students, the sense of belonging to the academic community, the previous expectations about the online university climate, the perception of the relationships between students and teachers, and the awareness of the potential limits of online interactions.