Gather Study Lounge Best Practices Guide (Harvard DCE Pilot)

Hello! Thank you for piloting the Gather Study Lounge. The Gather Study Lounge is a tool built into your course’s Canvas site that gives your students a space to meet outside of class time. Our goal for building this tool is to create an easy-to-access place for our online students to come together in a way students might come together at a library or a café on campus. Students are able to access the lounge 24/7 without needing to have teaching staff open a Zoom room for them.

Below is an overview of the tool and some best practices for introducing it to your students and implementing it in your class.

How To Request Gather Study Lounge:

Request Gather Study Lounge through this form.

What It Is

The Study Lounge functions as a “Zoom lounge” that your students in your class can access without needing teaching staff to open or host the room. Students are able to see how many classmates have visited the lounge within the past hour.

Students can use the Study Lounge as a space to meet with their classmates outside of class time. They can use it for group project meetings, study sessions, or general discussion. We want the Study Lounge to be a space where, when students are discussing meeting outside of class time, to say, “Let’s meet in the class Study Lounge!”

Finding the Gather Study Lounge

You and your students can find the Gather Study Lounge by going to Zoom in your course Canvas site. The Study Lounge will be at the top of the page.

Introducing the Gather Study Lounge to Your Students 

Introduce Gather Study Lounge to your students and encourage them to use it as a virtual open collaboration space. You could say:

This is your space to use for study groups, project meetings, group work sessions, or anything else that you would use an on-campus meetup space for. You can access the Gather Study Lounge at any time and I encourage you all to treat it as our online collaborative space this semester. You can use the class discussion board to coordinate meetups.

Student Behavior Expectations

Upon entering the Study Lounge, students will see the following language:

This space has been created to allow for interactions between students outside course meeting times. In joining this room you are taking responsibility for creating a positive and supportive environment. In order to keep this room safe and welcoming space for everyone, please make sure: You abide by DCE standards of academic integrity and the collaboration policies set forth by your class. You use appropriate language and treat all classmates with respect You wear clothing that you would wear to class if you attended in person You refrain from driving a vehicle in the Gather Study Lounge If you witness a code of conduct violation, please contact your instructor or teaching assistant.

Please spend time during class reviewing the student behavior expectations with your students. If there is an incident where a student has demonstrated inappropriate behavior in this environment, the instructor should reach out directly to the Dean of Students, Robert Neugeboren at neugebor@fas.harvard.edu with the details of the incident.

Turning Off the Gather Study Lounge, if Necessary

You and your teaching staff can turn off the access to the Study Lounge. We advise you only do this when necessary, such as during exam periods. Remember to turn the lounge back on after the period is over.

To turn off the Study Lounge, navigate to the Zoom page in your Canvas course site.

Select the settings button in the Study Lounge section of the page. There, you can toggle the lounge on and off.

Once you’ve turned the lounge off, students will see that it is temporarily locked.

Help, Security, and Policy

Access

• Your Gather Study Lounge is only open and accessible to students who are enrolled in your course.

• If a student has been removed from your class/removed from Gather Study Lounge, they will not be able to see or access the Gather Study Lounge.

Getting Help & Policy

• If a student reaches out to you regarding technical issues with Gather Study Lounge, you can instruct them to email academictechnology@dce.harvard.edu

• If you or your teaching staff are having technical issues with Gather Study Lounge, please contact webconference@dce.harvard.edu.

• If there is an incident where a student has demonstrated inappropriate behavior in this environment, the instructor should reach out directly to the Associate Dean of Students, Shirley Greene, at shirleygreene@fas.harvard.edu with the details of the incident. 

• If you have minor students in your class, please consult Harvard University Guidelines for Interacting with Minors.