The creation of community within an online classroom has a positive influence on learning through the students’ perception of camaraderie with others in the class. Comradeship allows for a more captivating overall learning experience by motivating students to collaborate with peers within the class, fostering the construction of knowledge that is essential for online learning. This study investigated the influence of synchronous communication on the perceived level of classroom community when used as part of the design within an online class. The online class using the synchronous web conferencing system was compared to a second online class that used standard asynchronous communication technology. A quasi-experimental non-equivalent groups design was used to investigate the effects of these two time-related communication technologies (synchronous and asynchronous) on perceived classroom community and two sub sets of overall classroom community, social connectedness and learner commonality. For each class, both groups of learners were given a pre-survey followed by a 5-week summer school class having the same number of collaborative activities within each of their sessions. At the end of the summer session, each class was given a post-survey to detect any differences in perceived classroom community, as measured by Rovai's Community Classroom Scale. An ANCOVA was used to adjust for the non-equivalent experience before the online course. There was no significant difference in perceived classroom community and social connectedness when the course included synchronous communication as compared to asynchronous communication. However, the findings with asynchronous communication and learner commonality revealed a possible explanation that may help designers and instructors create of a more meaningful online learning experience.