The Community Builder
Welcome to The Community Builder. A weekly email blast with practical ideas for building community in your remote classes. Two ideas per week. Delivered with a smile.
Here are two sample prompts for building community in your remote classroom to give you a peek at the type of content:
Task your students to create a short quiz of fun facts about themselves to post to a Blackboard discussion board so that the class can get to know each other. Here’s one by Lisa Nunn, Sociology, using www.quizizz.com. Lisa is going to give her students one “free” absence over the semester if they post one about themselves to Blackboard (she would give them the one absence anyway, but students like to feel like they are earning a free ticket).
Have students develop Community Guidelines together. This idea was shared by Fiorella Morales who teaches in SOLES. These are ground rules for behavior and expectations in class. They can focus on being respectful to others, general zoom etiquette, or anything in between. Here’s an example from a professor at Queen’s College who uses them to foster inclusivity by creating a supportive environment for discussing issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality in her English courses.
Have a community building prompt that has been successful in your course? Share your idea here and get featured!