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This video was a recorded interview where Dave Cormier asked Maha Bali to give a recommendation for online learning during the pivot to emergency remote teaching during Covid-19.
Creating semi-formal, semi-synchronous spaces outside of formal class time for students to socialize with each other (and the teacher where possible) to address the socioemotional needs of students.
Building community throughout the semester, addressing socioemotional needs and keeping the pulse of the class as it helps you stay in touch in between classes.
Decide which tool works best for your purposes and your students, and if possible, create the space early in the semester and start using it early on.
Recognize that students need spaces outside the formal spaces for assignments and graded discussion forums and blogs, in order to ask less formal questions and discuss things with each other and with you. Create a space from the beginning of the semester where you can all do this, and recognize that even though you need to check the space every now and then, students can also use that space to support each other regularly without your intervention. For this to be a semi-formal space for building community, explain to students that this is a space where they can share music, jokes, or chat about concerns, and make room also for quick Q&A related to the class of the kind students might ask you in the corridor just before class starts, for example. Model this kind of behavior to them early on, then let them run with it.
These can be spaces like a Slack team, a WhatsApp group, or even a ‘cafe’ space on your LMS/VLE discussion board. Occasionally, students create student-only such spaces for themselves, but it’s also helpful for teachers to create them (even in parallel with student-only spaces) and include teaching assistants, for example, for faster communication where it is needed.
A semester-long commitment which involves ups and downs, but on average around 15-30 minutes per day per class of checking notifications on the platform you set up. It depends how active the class are in asking questions and responding to each other’s questions as well.
Although we do not wish to promote any particular commercial tool, Slack is one of the most useful tools for this because it allows for multiple channels, so you can have a channel for school work and questions about assignments, and a separate channel for socialization, as well as allowing private chats with individual or multiple participants (to reduce your email load!). However, if you are uncomfortable with it (because unfamiliar or because of privacy concerns) here are some other options:
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This activity is one of a series of activities from Equity Unbound, focused on equitable online community building.
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Maha Bali is undertaking research to discover how educators are using these open resources from Equity Unbound/OneHE. Click the button to find out more and to participate.
