Yes, I have been able to make friends through online school, although it isn’t as easy to bond with people when you can’t see them in person. Now that I am in my senior year, there are several other communications majors who have been in every one of my classes, so we have gotten to know each other somewhat. We chat on Facebook and through our discussion forums while we are working on homework.

I would advise online students to take every opportunity to communicate with your classmates. It might feel a little awkward at first, but a good start is to read everyone’s biography at the start of class. Maybe you have something in common that you wouldn’t have expected which will help you to spark a conversation. Just keep in mind that you have to be the one to reach out.

I can make friends in the online school setting, but it is challenging. I have the ability to communicate with my peers since we have exchanged e-mail addresses. I am also able to communicate through the discussion board. There are also specific areas of the website that are dedicated to interacting with other students. Mostly though, I have kept in touch with classmates who I have made friendships with through other resources, like Facebook.

Yes, I have been able to make friends online through the daily interaction that my program requires. For example, we are constantly interacting with other students through the discussion board. And at American Intercontinental University, there is also a Virtual Commons, which is a place to network with others in your program. Many people give out their e-mail address and phone number, too.

I don’t know a lot about the backgrounds of the other students in my class, but we get to know each other’s personalities through negotiating group work. In my program, all of the students are moved through the classes on the same track, so I have been working with the same group of about 15 people for the last 12 classes. Getting to know people is almost unavoidable since we work together so closely.

Yes, I think that it is possible to make friends in an online setting. We have a couple of ways to communicate with other students, such as instant messaging and an internal social network where each student has a profile. It could be compared to a miniature Facebook. We get to create a profile and upload pictures. I think it is helpful because I can see who I am talking to. It makes our interactions more personal.

I also have learned about my classmates inadvertently through discussion boards. For example, in my finance class, we were discussing budgeting and that was very revealing about who my classmates are. Based on their responses, I could tell that a woman was a single mother and a man had just turned 40 and decided to go back to school. It doesn’t get too intrusive, but I do find it comforting to know a little bit about my classmates.

Yes, you can make friends through online schooling. I have found that making friends at the University of Phoenix is fairly painless because I meet a lot of people through the team learning environment. After I get to know my team members a little bit, I connect with them on Facebook, which is the best way for us to communicate with each other.

Yes, I have been able to make friends through my online classes. I have 4 people in particular that I have made personal connections with, and we even talk outside of class on Facebook and we follow each other on Twitter. Had we not met through the University of Phoenix, we would never have developed this friendship. For that reason, I think that online school can be an excellent place to build a digital network, which is so important these days.

You can make friends through online school if you put in the effort to do so. Due to the small class sizes of 10 to 20 students, I have been able to build relationships with other students using the discussion forums. Some students will even send e-mail messages to the rest of the class trying to initiate study sessions online. So I think that you will lose out on the networking aspect of college by going to school online unless you actively seek to build those relationships through social media like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Like all aspects of online education, you get out of it what you put into it.

Yes, you can make friends in an online school setting. I interact with other students through the University of Phoenix’s social networking website. Meeting people is an important part of the college experience and this resource gives me the opportunity to speak with other students. It allows me to see how they feel about their education and where they think it will lead them. That information is a good starting point to find common interests that can lead to interpersonal connections.

I think you can make friends online, but you do have to put in the effort. Ashford University tries to facilitate networking between students through a portal called the Ashford Café, which is a chat area where students can log in and find study partners or discuss personal matters in a low-pressure setting. In fact, I have met a few people through the café and we get together on Facebook to help each other study. So I would advise online students to utilize features like that to reach out to classmates.