Project-Based Learning in Social Innovation—Developing a Sense of Belonging in Online Contexts

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Author!

The study addresses a very important topic, as the use of PBL in higher education has not yet been sufficiently discussed, even though the method links studies and the labor market and, in addition to preparing students for the labor market, also has a strong impact on the development of soft skills. This statement is confirmed by the results of the research presented in the study.

The structure of the study is clear, understandable, and easy to follow, but some editing would make it even easier to understand. I recommend revising the study in four areas.

1. In the literature review, it would be important to present the results of the questionnaire survey in more detail and compare them with the results of the study in the discussion section.
2. It would be important to present the coding categories in an appendix, as they are only mentioned in the manuscript.

3. The sampling method should be clarified: how many students were there, what was their composition, and how were the eight interviewees selected? In addition, the Methodology chapter should be made clearer: the research methodology, the steps of the research, sampling, etc. Currently, there are steps that are not mentioned and others that are mentioned twice. In addition, the justification for qualitative research should be better explained and substantiated, so that the limitations described can be better supported. It would also be important to refer to the appendix in the main text.

4. The discussion chapter should be completely reworked, as it is currently too redundant and overlaps with the results chapter. In addition, a new research result (5.8) only appears here and not among the results. I suggest that this section be moved to the results chapter. The conclusion subchapter should be more concise, focusing on comparing individual important results with the literature.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript discusses the important topic of belonging in online, project-based higher education. Its qualitative, interview-based design with thematic analysis offers valuable insights, especially for collaborative learning and social innovation. The inclusion of real-world challenges and external stakeholder involvement enhances practical relevance.

However, several areas require significant improvement:

1. Methodology requires greater clarity and coherence. There is inconsistency in the reported number of participants (e.g., Lines 233 vs. 270), and it is unclear how large or representative the sample is. The research question(s) and/or hypothesis guiding the study should be clearly articulated to provide a focused analytical framework. 

2. The theoretical section lacks depth. A more structured review of recent research on SoB, particularly in digital and hybrid learning environments, is needed to better contextualise the study and justify its contribution to the field.

3. Structural and textual repetition should be reduced. Key concepts—such as the importance of the challenge or the interpretivist approach—are repeated in multiple sections without offering new insights.

4. The abstract and introduction should be revised for conciseness and precision. Eliminate redundant sentences and focus on presenting the unique contribution of the study.

5. Conclusion and Abstract Tone: The tone in the abstract and conclusion is mostly appropriate, but can be improved by avoiding promotional or speculative language. Phrases like “enhance academic outcomes and prepare students for the future” (Lines 23–24) could be made more specific or evidence-based.

6. Missing Citations and Unsubstantiated Claims

   Upon review, it appears the manuscript would benefit from a more consistent integration of in-text citations to substantiate certain claims. Incorporating these supporting citations will notably enhance the academic rigor and credibility of the work.

   For example:

   • General assertions regarding "the importance of group dynamics, trust in groups, and the formation of a team contract for familiarising and fostering SoB" (Lines 15-16), or the statement that "universities may have to consider several interrelated dimensions of learning: cognitive, emotional, and social, among others" (Lines 118-119), are not directly supported by available research/literature

   • Claims such as an "agreement contributes to creating a SoB among team members" (Lines 342-343) and "The role of the team for SoB is crucial" (Line 403) would be significantly strengthened by direct reference to available research/literature.

With these revisions, the paper could make a valuable contribution to the literature on online learning, belonging, and pedagogical design in higher education.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Consistency in Tense and Voice

• The manuscript occasionally shifts between past and present tense, especially when describing the course, methods, or findings. For clarity and academic tone, descriptions of the study and its procedures should consistently use past tense, while general or theoretical claims may remain in the present tense.

• Example: Lines 233–234 – “This study draws on...” could be made consistent with “was designed to...” in Line 236.

Redundancy and Repetition

• Eliminate unnecessary repetition of ideas and phrases across sections

Wordiness and Awkward Phrasing

• Some sentences are overly long or awkwardly constructed, which impacts clarity. Shortening or breaking them into two parts would improve readability (Lines 70–72; 95-101; 190-192; 68-69; 303-307 ... )

Improving Quotation Integration

• integrate student quotations more fluently to improve narrative flow and avoid abrupt transitions.

Article and Preposition Errors

• Minor but frequent errors in the use of articles (a/the) and prepositions reduce fluency. For example,

  • “The concept of SoB relates to a collection of connected ideas...” (Line 165) is correct, but other sentences like

  • “The Openlab course is given both during the autumn and spring semesters...” (Line 190) might flow better as: “...offered in both autumn and spring semesters.”

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Summary: This article investigates factors that contribute to sense of belonging, a growing field, but adds to the literature by focusing on an online course that requires collaboration and project-based learning. This work is timely and important due to the rapid increase in online offerings and the enrollment cliff which may be impacted retention and thus by sense of belonging. 

• The introduction and background are clear and thorough.
• The manuscript is clear, relevant, and presented in a well-structured manner.
• The references are all recent publications and relevant.
• The manuscript is scientifically sound and the qualitative analyses are appropriate.

Specific suggestions:

• line 259 Center "for" the Advancement
• line(s) 233/251/270/765 Were 10 or 8 interviews conducted? There are conflicting statements. 
• Section 3 Methods
  • Overall, the methods are repetitive and hard to follow. I suggest editing for flow and combining the redundant information. For example, it is mentioned multiple times that the interviews were 40-80 minutes over Zoom, that they provided consent for recording, and so on. Please organize the methods by topic: participant recruitment, sample, interviews, coding, etc.  
• Section 5 Discussion
  • I appreciate the organization of the discussion by theme. This makes it very easy to follow and reference. 
• line 682 "eighth"
• line 693 extra comma
• Appendix B: Please refer to this table in the results section.
• Appendix C: Please refer to the interview guide in the methods section. It is helpful to reference when reading the methods. 
• I appreciate the discussion around cultural differences and expectations of SoB, especially as your sample was so diverse.
• Overall, this study addressed an important research question and provides useful insights. 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I have no further comments or suggestions for the authors.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In my understanding, the study presented in this manuscript was intended to investigate students’ perceived factors that contribute to the sense of belonging (SoB) in an online course featuring social-cultural context and the interaction with external stakeholders.

The article title could be further revised to align with the research purpose.

The sense of belonging (SoB) is a popular and important issue in online learning. The research itself has great potential to contribute to the field, but I think this manuscript could be further improved in the following aspects:

In the abstract, the authors mention “….allowing them to express their unique experiences and perspectives on SoB in the social-cultural context of a master course, with participants from several countries organized by OpenLab” (Page 1, lines 10~12), in the research design or the data exploration, I don’t see how the social-cultural context played a role in this study.

Introduction:

While reading the Introduction, I found that it mostly describes what the study does but says little about why the study is necessary, which questions it aims to answer, or how it connects to prior work. I suggest that the author restructure the Introduction to:

1. Describe the research background and context of the problem.
2. Summarize key existing studies on this topic.
3. State the specific research questions and explain why they matter.
4. Briefly outline how this study will address those questions.

Page 2 lines 43 ~ 44, incomplete sentence.

Page 2, lines 45 ~ 48, please clarify how the semi-structured interview differs significantly from a pre-designed questionnaire. Specifically, explain how this approach provides insights that prior questionnaire-based studies did not capture and why those investigations did not aim to explore students’ unique experiences and perspectives.

Page 2, Lines 48 ~ 50 , how was the following conclusion made ? “ We have detected a lack of research about students’ SoB in courses that include external societal stakeholders and/or real-life challenges.”  I recommend examining previous studies with a literature review on the relevant topics, considering a comparison table and citations. 

Page 2 lines 68~69, the first sentence appears confusing. I suggest rephrasing it.

Page 2 Lines 69 ~71, the sentence appears confusing and the conjunction “but” is misleading as “solving problems together” and “benefiting socially are both positive features, not contrasting features. Also, two successive “where” clauses make the structure feel heavy. I suggest rephrasing it.

Page 3, lines 90~93, please provide the year for citation. “ Ahn and Davis found……”

Methods

Please provide the interview protocol or the semi-structured interview guide as an appendix and a brief description of the interview questions.

It appears not clear what data were collected.

I suggest providing a table of the demographic information of the interviewees (age, gender, education, etc). Earlier, the authors specified that the course has participants with several countries, so, it might be helpful to specify their (cultural)background or countries. Simply mentioning the language they speak might be not sufficient to understand their culture background. Also, as the authors stress on student diversity in this course regarding the cultural background (countries), it might be worth discussing if the interviewees are a representative sample considering there are participants from several countries.

How were the data coded? How many coders were involved and who were they? What was the inter-rater reliability ? 

The authors mentioned that seven categories emerged after the coding process, I recommend adding a table of these categories, showing their frequencies and example statements.

Results

Based on the example provided for each category, I am not convinced that the results /findings were based on the students’ response. I personally have concerns with all categories.

For example, in the first category, the student responded “I think it is really important. Especially the parts about resolving conflict. Being many 171 strong personalities in the group.” It is not clear what it refers to, also, the student specially mentioned the part about resolving conflict is especially important. How come this will lead to a category like “Building trust” ?

Personal profiles , ““…we were from different cultures, which meant we knew we wouldn’t understand each other 186 on all levels.” [Student 02, translated]”. How the student’s response will lead to a conclusion that “Photos and personalised profiles facilitate a new course’s introductory and socialisation phase.”?

4.4. Challenges. In the example, the student specially mentioned they felt a sense of belonging because of their shared experience, while the authors interpreted it as Challenges  as the factor to contribute to the sense of belonging. This might be partially correct. Challenges can lead to shared experience, but does shared experience necessarily require challenges? 

“I felt a sense of belonging in our group because we shared the experience of taking this course,  of being involved in this project, of being given this task or challenge, and of collectively trying to solve it.” [Student 22, translated]

Overall, the manuscript would benefit from having the authors address the concerns outlined above, which would, in turn, enhance the study’s rigor. I also recommend that they 1) frame their implications and findings explicitly within the context for which the course was designed. 2) Also, the authors specially emphasized the project-based learning, it might be better to further clarify the role of project-based learning in this study. 

Author Response

Please see the uploaded response document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper entitled Project-Based Learning in Social Innovation - Developing a sense of belonging in online contexts deals with an interesting, actual and relevant topic which can be of interest to a broader audience.

 The aim of the paper is to examine how students perceive factors contributing to their sense of belonging in online contexts. The main contribution of this paper is in its insight into how higher education institutions can support students’ sense of belonging in hybrid and online learning contexts and in design that, if presented with clear structure, could be applicable to different hybrid and online courses. The research points to the importance of group dynamics, trust in groups, and team contract for fostering a sense of belonging. 

Please, consider my observations and suggestions:

An abstract has enough data on the content. I suggest not to use the words and syntagms from the title as keywords (PBL, SoB, Social innovation course)

Although it is not usual to put study description in the Introduction (before the Background), I understand the authors’ logic in this paper to do so. Otherwise, I always suggest putting the research aim (and research questions, if any) before the Method (since the research aim represents the theoretical part of the research design), and the research approach (in this case qualitative and interpretivist) in Method (since it represents the technical part of the research design). 

In the Background sense of belonging as a key concept is described but there should be more information on it. Also, the concept of project-based learning should be explained as well since it is an important part of research (and since it is in the title). Background (and later Discussion) is overall insufficient for a quality review on the topic, and therefore should be improved and more references should be included. 

Method has relevant data: in-depth interviews with 10 students were conducted, but I would appreciate more data on the interview process (later it was stated it was semi-structured - line 419) and criteria for student selection, so this section should be more elaborated (authors could state some of posed questions in the interview, state whether they had ethical approval, written consents, when were interviews conducted, etc..). Also, I would appreciate more data on students' characteristics (language they speak is not enough).

Results are presented in seven categories, based on qualitative data analysis, with one (or few) illustrative quote(s) from the interviews in each category. I suggest putting more quotes that “prove” given results and conclusions in order for this section to be more informative. Results are presented in a way that it is not clear whether students said that, or those findings are the authors’ interpretations / conclusions (for example: Building trusts: lines 173-176. Who said that “team contract” contributes to developing a social presence (...) etc…? Did students say that? Or is it information from the literature, something that is already known (like in Personal profile: lines 188-193)..? I would appreciate more elaboration in this section, with more precise and exact information on how students perceive factors contributing to their sense of belonging in online contexts. I don’t find presented results informative enough for deeper understanding of students' perception. Also, I suggest to the authors to present only results in section Results, and not to interpret data or use references in that section, since there is Discussion where it is more appropriate.

Discussion is structured same as Results (7 topics plus 8th Residual observations), which is fine. But, it could be more coherent with results, with clearer connection / conclusions on the importance of obtained results in the scientific context. In Discussion topics Teams and Challenges have no references, so I suggest that the authors put them. In Residual observations, lines 366-368, it was stated that several studies have found (….). I suggest that authors include references on those studies. 

Summary and Conclusion, as well as Limitations  are informative.

Paper has 32 references, with 9 recent (published in the last 5 years). I suggest to the authors to include more recent references.

Author Response

Please see the uploaded response document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf