Research has found that students’ feeling of belonging is important to many aspects of their academic performance. Building classroom community is an important strategy for developing students’ feelings of belonging and can ensure all students have opportunities to receive and provide help.
Tinto, V. (1987). Leaving college: Rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition. University of Chicago Press. Chicago, IL.
Related tips:
Building Classroom Community: Out of Class
Action:
-
Encourage students to form study groups. Providing just a few points, though inconsequential, for meeting in a study groups at least once nevertheless motivates some students to engage in this potentially beneficial practice.
- Ask students to submit the names of the people who attended the study group, what they did during the group, and when they met. This can provide some accountability.
- Give students recommendations for the study group including: how they should use their time, what size group they should meet in, and how long they should meet (perhaps just a minimum amount of time).
Reason:
-
Some, but not all students will already have a social network within the class within which they can create a study group. But likely all students would benefit from a study group.
- By making it explicit what study groups should do to study, you can help students practice more rather than less effective methods. This can be domain specific and might not be something students already know.
Action:
- Provide a tool for students to ask and answer questions. Include a link to this tool on the syllabus and explicitly encourage students to ask and answer questions. Sakai has a variety of resources such as forums, blogs, chat rooms, and wiki pages. Sakai also provides integration of Piazza, which encourages question asking and answering by allowing students to ask questions anonymously and to answer questions collaboratively in a wiki format. A recent study of Piazza use showed that women were more likely to answer questions anonymously.
- Encourage students to ask and answer questions online by providing a few points of credit for engagement online during the semester.
Reason:
- Students can reinforce their learning and support others. Providing an appropriate tool enables all students to have access to out-of-class help.
Action:
- Specify for students what collaborative behavior would be appropriate and inappropriate. Specific examples can be helpful for students to understand your expectations. For example:
- some faculty permit, and even require, students work together to complete a homework assignment. While other faculty members require that students complete an assignment on their own.
- in computer science, faculty specify whether or not students can help each other debug code.
- some faculty require students to peer review each others’ paper drafts, highlighting the importance of giving credit where credit is due if they use another student’s idea.
Reason:
- Appropriate and inappropriate forms of collaboration can vary widely between disciplines. Ensure that students understand what types of collaborative activity they can engage in. This can also be an opportunity to encourage students to collaborate outside of class.
Action:
- Assign students to a low-stakes assignment (worth few points and not graded harshly) that requires them to discuss the course content with a peer outside of class.
- The larger the number of students in the group, the more complicated it can be to structure the assignment in an effective way.
Reason:
- This can help students who don’t already know anyone in the class get connected. If students know other people in the class they have more options of whom to reach to for support if and when they need it.
