Engagement and Community In Your Course

Basic Ways to Build Community

• The earlier you start, the better the outcome will be

• Set the tone:

  • How formal/informal do you want the conversations to be? 

  • In any discussion or assignment prompts, write the way you’d like your students to write. 

  • Feel free to share your own thoughts on the topic.

  • Is it ok for students to share other thoughts/insights that are not related directly to a particular course concept? For example, if you teach an introductory statistics course, are you ok with students sharing articles that share statistics in an interesting way?

• Set the expectations:

  • Web conference behavior

  • How to participate in class

  • The kind of community you want for your class

Icebreakers

• Icebreakers are a great way to engage your students from day 1.

• You can do these in class or using a discussion board.

• Some example prompts include: Introduce yourself and tell us something about yourself, introduce yourself and share something related to the course, tell us two truths and a lie, etc.
• Respond to student introductions and encourage TAs to do the same
• Encourage students to respond to each other

• Pros: 

  • Great way to learn names quickly, gives you something tangible to remember your students, something to reference later as well

  • Doing this via discussion board saves time during live class

Discussion Boards

• Topic-driven:

  • Conversation points

  • Open ended questions about the reading or a video

    • Example from a course on Sports and the Law: In your opinion, which athlete has the best "brand" and why?

  • Focus sentences: Ask students to pick one or two sentences from this week’s reading they feel like is significant and one or two sentences describing why.

• Social-driven:

  • Class “water cooler”

  • If you want to, you can make one discussion board for posts, or create a topic hashtag if you're using Yellowdig

  • Remind students during class they can post there

• Tools: 

  • Yellowdig – social, easy to grade, uses a "feed" to keep new content at the top

  • Canvas discussion forum – good for when you want to grade based on content

  • Piazza - great for Q&A forums

Groupwork and Online Collaboration

• Breakout rooms, group brainstorming, connect with each other without the teaching staff present

• BEWARE: Group work can sometimes go sour when they have to hand something in together. Some ways to combat this:

  • Ask students to write a “team agreement” or “charter” for group assignments

  • Assign team member evaluations at the end of a project

Feedback Surveys

Interest surveys are a great way to get to know your students

• Feedback surveys are excellent for connectedness with your students

  • Administering a weekly or semi-weekly anonymous Canvas survey with open ended questions can help you: 

    • Gauge how your students are feeling about your course as a whole or specific aspects
    • Tune into issues or difficulties you were unaware of from your vantage point 
    • Identify ways to improve your course immediately instead of waiting for final course evaluations
    • Give your students an opportunity to safely express their needs
  • Let students know that you read these by:

    • Adjusting the course based on feedback you receive (be sure to let them know what you're adjusting and why)

    • Giving explanations for policies you don’t want to change

    • Addressing points of confusion

Resources

• Creating Real Time Connections Online

• Enroll in the On-Demand Interaction Options Canvas site to test out interaction tools such as Yellowdig, Piazza, Canvas Discussions, and OpenCast Social