Working Out Thesis Stuff in my Brain

Okay, so the basic premise of my thesis is to examine surveys from the ECI 304 classes in regards to their sense of community and Learning Orientations. The courses are categorized into traditional classroom or online formats.

Questions/Issues:

1. Sense of Community - When was this survey taken - the 4th or 5th week? Is that enough time for students to determine their sense of community? Would it be very different if it was taken at the end of the course? Or maybe it doesn't matter, I don't know
   
2. Learner Orientation Ok, so LO is different than learning styles because LO focuses on affective, social and conative factors in learning, whereas learning styles focus on cognitive factors. LO is important for studying online learning because instructors can't use nonverbal cues (which they often use in traditional classes) in order to perceive motivation, incentive and other affective factors in a student's learning. Without that knowledge instructors can't change instruction appropriately.
   (Sorry, that was a kind of "download" from my brain)
   Martinez & Jones' research shows that Learner Orientation is significantly higher in web-based courses as opposed to traditional courses, meaning that web-based students may not be "typical" students in this regard. So obviously course format is a factor in terms of Learner Orientation (I guess because Performers and Transformers are more likely than conformers to self-select web-based courses or because they are more likely not to frop out of them).
   
3. Similarly, some research has shown a significant difference in perceived sense of community between online and traditional courses (of course pedagogy may have something to do with that, and hopefully instructional method/pedagogy will be controlled in this study). Other research has shown no significant difference. But let's just say for the time being that soc is affected by or can be correlated with course format.

So now, I'm trying to figure out the Research Question.

This is what I'm thinking at the moment

• Learner Orientation may have a relationship with course format, but is not affected by it
  (correlation, but not causality)
• Sense of community may have a relationship with course format, but also might be affected by it (correlation, maybe causality)
• Sense of community may have a relationship with LO, or may be affected by it (correlation or causality)

In my view, LO and course format do not change, they stay constant (yes course format can change according to selection, but in this class people are not changing from one to the other after the semester has started). So they are independent variables

Sense of community is the only thing that can change, making it a dependent variable.

But I'm still unsure where to go with the question.