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What is community building and why is it important? How do I build community in my class? This research-informed guide addresses these questions with a particular focus on synchronous community building strategies. At the same time, many of the community building strategies presented in this guide can also be adapted to the asynchronous modality. Considerations for asynchronous engagement are outlined at the end of the guide.

The CTL is here to consult with instructors on further exploring community building strategies. To schedule your one-on-one consultation, please contact the Faculty Programs and Services team at CTLfaculty@columbia.edu .

The CTL is here to help!

For additional support with community building in your course, email CTLFaculty@columbia.edu to schedule your 1-1 consultation.

What is Community Building?

Community building in the classroom is about creating a space in which students and instructors are committed to a shared learning goal and achieve learning through frequent collaboration and social interaction (Adams & Wilson, 2020; Berry, 2019; McMillan & Chavis, 1986). With intentional planning and deliberate pedagogical choices, cultivating and reinforcing positive interactions among classroom participants becomes an essential component of building a classroom community.

Why Build Community?

Community building is vital to active student engagement in a course across all modalities. Research shows that when students feel that they belong to their academic community, that they matter to one another, and that they can find emotional, social, and cognitive support for one another, they are able to engage in dialogue and reflection more actively and take ownership and responsibility of their own learning (Baker, 2010; Berry, 2019; Brown, 2001; Bush et al. 2010; Cowan, 2012; Lohr & Haley, 2018; Sadera et al., 2009).

The interplay of the social presence (participants' ability to establish themselves as real/authentic selves in their academic community), cognitive presence (participants' ability to construct meaning and confirm understanding), and teaching presence (instructor's ability to design, facilitate, and provide direct instruction) cultivates a community that provides optimal support for student learning. Deliberate community building is therefore a key component of successful student engagement and performance in class.

Community Building Strategies

This section provides community building strategies that are organized in three broad categories: social icebreakers, metacognitive activities, and content-based activities. These strategies are presented as suggestions and are not meant to be prescriptive; adapt and modify these example activities according to your unique teaching context.

To ensure the successful implementation of community building strategies in your course, consider your context, the technologies available to you and your students, and what must be prepared and established prior to students interacting and collaborating with each other as a whole class or in small groups (see checklist below).
Sample activities Metacognitive Activities What are metacognitive activities? Metacognition refers to knowledge about one's own thoughts, including the cognitive process and regulation involved in directing one's learning (Ambrose et al., 2010; Akyol & Garrison, 2011; Dunlosky & Medcalfe, 2009; Lai, 2011). Metacognitive activities (e.g., self-assessment, self-explanation, monitoring, revising, etc.) allow students to reflect on and regulate their own learning. For a more detailed explanation, see the CTL resource on Metacognition . Sample activities Content-based Activities Sample activities

Considerations for Asynchronous Modality and Large Courses

While the community building strategies presented thus far focus on synchronous live sessions, they can be adapted and used in the asynchronous modality. Also, because community building can be challenging for large courses, some adjustments may be necessary for the community building strategies to be more useful and practical for large courses. Below is a list of general considerations for modifying the community building strategies for different pedagogical contexts.
Asynchronous Modality

Assign a community building activity to students to complete in their own time.

Specify the deadline for completion.

Ask students to share their completed activity on a discussion forum and comment on each other's post (e.g., discussion boards on CourseWorks, shared Google document or slides)

Utilize your course's learning management system (e.g., CourseWorks) to extend the class community to the asynchronous platform. For example, on CourseWorks, consider creating group discussions and arranging regular asynchronous group interactions throughout the semester.

Regularly check in on students and make sure to maintain your teaching presence. Some strategies include:

Providing a verbal summary of the community building activity in class.

Commenting on student posts online.

Emailing the highlights of the completed community building activity.

Large Courses

Consider ways to make student interactions more intimate and workload manageable.

If you ask students to participate in icebreaker activities or other group assignments, consider putting students into the same groups each time so that they have the opportunity to become acquainted with each other in a smaller group setting throughout the semester.

If you ask students to upload posts on discussion boards on CourseWorks or another online platform and read and comment on each other's posts, consider creating group discussions so that students are expected to read and engage with only their group members' posts.

After an in-class group activity, having every student group report back to the whole class may be too time-consuming if there are too many small groups. The following are some alternative suggestions for the whole-class debrief.

Rather than having every student group report back, randomly select groups to share their discussions.

If you ask students to take notes in a collaborative document during their group activity, skim through their notes and highlight some of them by identifying particular emerging themes/patterns and reading them out loud to the whole class.

If students engage in a problem-solving activity in small groups, quickly assess their learning with a polling tool (e.g., PollEverywhere , ).

Assign students a community building activity in advance so that they can complete it before coming to class. Use Google Forms or other online survey tools to collect their responses. In class, use the survey results to facilitate a whole class discussion. You could also use a polling tool (e.g., PollEverywhere , ) to invite students' participation during class.

References

Angelo, T. A., & Cross, K. P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Berry, S. (2019). Teaching to Connect: Community-Building Strategies for the Virtual Classroom. Online Learning , (1), 164-183.

Bransford, J.D., Brown, A.L., & Cocking, R.R. (1999). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school . Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Dunlosky, J. and Metcalfe, J. (2009). Metacognition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Lai, E.R. (2011). Metacognition: A Literature Review . Pearson's Research Reports.

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What is community building and why is it important? How do I build community in my class? This research-informed guide addresses these questions for synchronous and asynchronous courses.

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The level of potential development is the level at which learning takes place. It comprises cognitive structures that are still in the process of maturing, but which can only mature under the guidance of or in collaboration with others.

Background

Social constructivism is a variety of cognitive constructivism that emphasizes the collaborative nature of much learning. Social constructivism was developed by post-revolutionary Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky was a cognitivist, but rejected the assumption made by cognitivists such as Piaget and Perry that it was possible to separate learning from its social context. He argued that all cognitive functions originate in (and must therefore be explained as products of) social interactions and that learning did not simply comprise the assimilation and accommodation of new knowledge by learners; it was the process by which learners were integrated into a knowledge community. According to Vygotsky (1978, 57),

Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level and, later on, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals.

Vygotsky's theory of social learning has been expanded upon by numerous later theorists and researchers.

View of Knowledge

Cognitivists such as Piaget and Perry see knowledge as actively constructed by learners in response to interactions with environmental stimuli. Vygotsky emphasized the role of language and culture in cognitive development. According to Vygotsky, language and culture play essential roles both in human intellectual development and in how humans perceive the world. Humans' linguistic abilities enable them to overcome the natural limitations of their perceptual field by imposing culturally defined sense and meaning on the world. Language and culture are the frameworks through which humans experience, communicate, and understand reality. Vygotsky states (1968, 39),

A special feature of human perception ... is the perception of real objects ... I do not see the world simply in color and shape but also as a world with sense and meaning. I do not merely see something round and black with two hands; I see a clock ...

Language and the conceptual schemes that are transmitted by means of language are essentially social phenomena. As a result, human cognitive structures are, Vygotsky believed, essentially socially constructed. Knowledge is not simply constructed, it is co-constructed.

View of Learning

Vygotsky accepted Piaget's claim that learners respond not to external stimuli but to their interpretation of those stimuli. However, he argued that cognitivists such as Piaget had overlooked the essentially social nature of language. As a result, he claimed they had failed to understand that learning is a collaborative process. Vygotsky distinguished between two developmental levels (85):

The level of actual development is the level of development that the learner has already reached, and is the level at which the learner is capable of solving problems independently. The level of potential development (the "zone of proximal development") is the level of development that the learner is capable of reaching under the guidance of teachers or in collaboration with peers. The learner is capable of solving problems and understanding material at this level that they are not capable of solving or understanding at their level of actual development; the level of potential development is the level at which learning takes place. It comprises cognitive structures that are still in the process of maturing, but which can only mature under the guidance of or in collaboration with others.

View of Motivation

Whereas behavioral motivation is essentially extrinsic, a reaction to positive and negative reinforcements, cognitive motivation is essentially intrinsic - based on the learner's internal drive. Social constructivists see motivation as both extrinsic and intrinsic. Because learning is essentially a social phenomenon, learners are partially motivated by rewards provided by the knowledge community. However, because knowledge is actively constructed by the learner, learning also depends to a significant extent on the learner's internal drive to understand and promote the learning process.

Implications for Teaching

Collaborative learning methods require learners to develop teamwork skills and to see individual learning as essentially related to the success of group learning. The optimal size for group learning is four or five people. Since the average section size is ten to fifteen people, collaborative learning methods often require GSIs to break students into smaller groups, although discussion sections are essentially collaborative learning environments. For instance, in group investigations students may be split into groups that are then required to choose and research a topic from a limited area. They are then held responsible for researching the topic and presenting their findings to the class. More generally, collaborative learning should be seen as a process of peer interaction that is mediated and structured by the teacher. Discussion can be promoted by the presentation of specific concepts, problems, or scenarios; it is guided by means of effectively directed questions, the introduction and clarification of concepts and information, and references to previously learned material. Some more specific techniques are suggested in the Teaching Guide pages on Discussion Sections.

Reference

Vygotsky, Lev (1978). Mind in Society. London: Harvard University Press.

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The level of potential development is the level at which learning takes place. It comprises cognitive structures that are still in the process of maturing, but which can only mature under the guidance of or in collaboration with others. Social constructivism is a variety of cognitive constructivism that emphasizes the collaborative nature of much learning.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.