Center for Teaching and Scholarly Excellence

Creating a Learning Community

  1. Home
    2.  → 
  2. Course Design
    3.  → 
  3. Teaching Strategies
    4.  → Creating a Learning Community

Why does this matter?

The key components of a community of inquiry are: connections between instructor and students; students and their peers; and students and the course content. While faculty intuitively know how to create a learning community when face to face with their students, to do so in a virtual learning environment requires that instructors intentionally build a sense of presence.

Research has told us that “key to a successful experience (is the) power of human connectedness for learning” (Whiteside, et al, 2014). P. Talbert (2012) further noted that “peer interaction and associations influence students’ cognitive development, self-confidence, and motivation” (p. 23). To create an environment where there is a sense of belonging, a sense of being noticed, and an urge to learn with and among your online students (whether they are meeting in a Zoom room or through an asynchronous medium) faculty can choose from a number of strategies to create a sense of connectedness.

What does this look like in practice?

A virtual learning community that promotes social presence will benefit from the implementation of strategies prior to the semester, during the first week, throughout the semester and at the end of the semester.

Prior to the semester

Establish a faculty-student connection
  1. Welcome letter – offer a warm welcome with tips for succeeding in the course, preparation for the first day of class, an overview of the learning environment, and a request to respond with an expectation for learning
  2. Introductory video – introduce yourself, illustrate how students will be able to navigate your course, describe what technologies you plan to use and what materials students will need on the first day
  3. Upload materials to Canvas – consider a user-friendly method of navigation for your students
  4. Survey of prior knowledge – consider what students may need to review in order to successfully learn new material; share resources that will help them strengthen their skills (LinkedIn Learning or faculty produced tutorials, etc.)

During the first week

Encourage a culture of respect and support for one another
  1. Online introductions – ask questions that will help students connect to one another
  2. Group syllabus scavenger hunt – create a low stakes assignment that encourages students to familiarize themselves with course learning objectives, assignments, and expectations
  3. Student-created list of classroom protocol – help students create a sense of ownership while developing rules of civility
  4. Communication protocol – establish where questions should be posted, when you will be able to respond to them, and how students can community with one another

During the semester

Provide connections between students and content
  1. Group work – group work provides scaffolding for student learning especially when there are gaps and misconceptions (see Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development)
  2. Social discussion forum – create a water-cooler like discussion forum (Virtual Café) where students can communicate with another
  3. Q & A discussion forum – create a discussion forum where students can ask questions about course content, assignments, etc.
  4. 1’ Paper – offer an opportunity for quick feedback related to student learning and questions.
  5. Reflection – create an opportunity for students to share reflective responses to questions you pose and respond to
  6. Midterm feedback – anonymously survey students to find out what teaching and learning strategies are working for them, what recommendations they may for things that are not working for them, and what they might do to personally improve their own learning experiences
  7. Peer review – when properly scaffolded, students learn that revision is a part of writing and that they can learn from reviewing someone else’s work
  8. Timely feedback – students benefit from learning what they are doing well, what they need to improve and how they can make needed improvements.

At the end of the semester

Seek to connect current students with future students
  1. Letters of advice to the next group of students – students learn more than content when they successfully navigate a course, and they willingly offer advice to students who have yet to start a course
  2. Summary of the semester – putting the pieces of the course puzzle together helps students articulate what they have learned. Consolidating the essential ideas and related details prepares students for the next related course.

References

  • Ambrose, S. A., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M. C., & Norman, M. K. (2010).  How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
  • Pacansky-Brock, M. & Vincent-Layton, K. (2020). Humanizing online teaching to equitize higher ed. ResearchGate. 
  • Talbert, P. (2012). Strategies to increase enrollment, retention, and graduation rates. Journal of Developmental Education 36,(1), 22-36.
  • Whiteside, A., Dikkers, A. & Lewis, S. (May 19, 2014) The Power of Social Presence for Learning. Educause Review at https://er.educause.edu/articles/2014/5/the-power-of-social-presence-for-learning.

In the classroom

Students in Joanna Trainor’s Business Foundations courses know to expect that her class will always start with a conversation where they will learn new things about each other. As class begins, Trainor asks each student to share one personal update and one professional update—an exercise that she calls a personal and professional check-in.

Trainor, who is the co-coordinator of Business Foundations and the Associate Director of Suffolk’s Center for Entrepreneurship, gives credit for this idea to Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz. The personal and professional check-in is grounded in research showing that getting to know our collaborators increases morale and makes us more likely to meet our commitments. Trainor has adapted this practice for the classroom to help students feel a sense of community and establish a foundation for collaborative learning.

For their personal updates, Trainor invites students to share whatever feels comfortable for them—it could be what they ate for breakfast, a movie they watched recently, or something deeper. For the professional update, Trainor encourages students who are not currently working to think of their profession as being a student and to share an update about something that is happening in one of their other classes or in their broader student experience.

Trainor starts each class meeting with a round of check-ins for the first three or four weeks of the semester. Then, as students get more comfortable with each other, she scales back, so that students only check-in during the first class meeting of the week. For a class of 30 students, Trainor finds that the personal and professional check-in typically takes about 20 minutes. Because students know that class will begin this way, they come prepared to share.

If you are interested in trying the personal and professional check-in in your class, Trainor offers some tips for facilitation. When you begin a round of check-ins, always offer your own personal and professional updates first to provide a model for your students to follow. Then, when you call on a student, also announce who you will be calling on next. Knowing when their turn is coming up will help students prepare.

In the video below, Trainor offers an overview of the personal and professional check-in.

References

Ferrazzi, K. & Raz, T. (2014). Never eat alone: And other secrets to success, one relationship at a time. Crown Publishing Group.

You might also be interested in

Collaborative Learning

Diversity & Inclusion

Office Hours