Four Ways to Cultivate Community in your Remote or Online Class

We all know how empowering and motivating it feels when we’re part of a community working hard toward a common goal—perhaps now more than ever. That feeling of connecting and belonging; having a voice and knowing you’ll be heard; knowing you’re supported and supporting others: this is what community can feel like. But cultivating community is more important than just a warm and fuzzy feeling for students. In fact, the research tells us that a sense of community and the characteristics of community are key ingredients to student success in your course, and by extension, to retention in the major and in college. Community can look different depending on class size, but here are some ways to cultivate it:

Make the goal of creating community transparent

Tell your students the reasons why it’s important, what you will do, and what you expect them to do, to help build that community. You might even make this one of your course goals. By the end of the term, what will students need to demonstrate to know whether they’ve met this goal, and how will you get them there? Perhaps it will be through successful collaborative work. Perhaps it will be through turning their video on when participating in discussion or asking follow up questions on a discussion board.

Build in different ways to present content and opportunities to demonstrate learning

In course design, we start with our course goals first and then work backwards to design assessments and learning activities. But often we fall back on presenting course materials through readings and lectures and assessing students learning through papers and exams. However, providing opportunities for students to engage in peer-to-peer instruction has shown to increase student engagement, learning, and sense of community within a course. When we proactively design courses to provide multiple ways for students to engage with the course concepts and each other, then we will meet the learning needs of as many students as possible.

Build in social opportunities for students

In the past year, we have heard from students about how much they miss social interactions with each other. Social interactions are important in learning and to building community. While perhaps harder to accomplish online, it is still possible to create social interactions in an online and remote course. We must intentionally create space where students can connect on a social level. For example, you might create a virtual water cooler online forum that would allow students to talk about non-course related topics. You might carve out a few minutes in each class for them to connect with each other. You might even create online networking events to connect them to former students who are now working in their fields of interest.

Personalize and humanize your online or remote classroom

Instructors can connect with students and bring humanity into virtual spaces in ways that range from small signals to larger projects. One of the easiest things to do is a personalized invitation to come to virtual office hours. It’s amazing how a brief “getting to know you” session can decrease students' hesitation about coming to you for assistance and increase their perception of a supportive environment.

Using icebreakers more than once can also help. Icebreakers are commonly used on the first day of class, but many icebreakers like a “pet zoom-bomb” or “what is everyone binge-watching now?” only take a few minutes, and get students warmed up and ready to participate in class. Other icebreakers such as “two truths and a lie” can be used to tie course concepts to students' personal experiences or compare their experiences to their peers.

One of the most effective ways to build community within a course is for students to collaboratively build guidelines, behaviors, or “netiquette” for the community. Even after a year of remote teaching and learning, many students are still unsure of the rules of interaction in an online space, or they may have experienced a range of expectations between various courses. Clarifying these expectations for your course is important. Inviting students to participate in setting the ground rules gets them involved in building community right from the start. It also communicates early on that you value their participation in the process.

With just a little effort—and some humanity—we can all build a community of learners regardless of the course modality.

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