Building community in the classroom whatever your teaching modality

Hello, my name is Nancy Gleason and I’m the director of the Hilary Ballon Center for Teaching and Learning at NYU Abu Dhabi and an associate professor of practice in political science as well.  

Today, I want to talk to you about building community in the classroom, and this applies whether you’re face to face, fully remote or somewhere in between. I have three key tips for you.  

First, structure student interactions. You can do this so that the students have an opportunity to get to know each other and it helps build a sense of trust for student-centred learning in your class.  

You can do this through brainstorming activities; you can do this through asynchronous discussion-forum activities and a traditional think-pair-share type of arrangement.

Second, you want to be present.   

You can do this through regular announcements through the learning management system, providing timely feedback on assignments, and generally being organised and, of course, compassionate.  

You can send a welcome email to students the week before classes start to set you off on a good footing with the students, to let them know you plan to be fully engaged.   

You can also make a personal connection with the students in order to be present through virtual office hours or face-to-face office hours, if that’s an option where you are.   

Virtual office hours for larger classes can be done in groups of five to 10, and for smaller classes one on one but perhaps only 10 to 15 minutes. You want to embrace the imperfections, and in this way I invite you to invite feedback from your students through a mid-term course evaluation. This helps them feel a part of their learning journey and, again, helps build community in the classroom.   

Third, you want to design your curriculum for inclusive teaching and have teaching methods that follow along with those intentions. A great way to begin this while you’re building community in the classroom is to provide a pre-poll on the content knowledge that your students have and the anxieties they may be bringing to the class.  

So, a pre-poll can be sent out a week or two before the class begins, so that you have a better understanding of your learners.   

Once the class is under way, you can also do this through providing low-stakes or even no-stakes assessments. Journalling is a great way to do this, or through quiz platforms such as Qualtrics or SurveyMonkey, where you’re not necessarily grading the assignments, but you’re giving the students an opportunity to let you know where they are, even anonymously.   

Finally, you want to convey caring and support while you’re trying to build this inclusive classroom, so demonstrate compassion with flexibility. This does not mean that you give up the rigour of your course, but it does mean that you are flexible in how students reach the learning  objectives.  

They may need various extensions; they may need understanding for the trauma that they’re experiencing due to the global pandemic and the regular challenges that students were facing before this pandemic began.   

So, those are my three tips for building community in the classroom: structuring student interactions, being present for your students, and designing your curriculum and teaching methods for inclusion.   

Thanks for tuning in. I’ll see you in the classroom. 

Nancy Gleason is the director of the Hilary Ballon Center for Teaching and Learning at NYU Abu Dhabi.