Community Building as Part of Your Online Teaching

One of the most difficult challenges faculty and students face in online classes is feeling a sense of community. Studies show that building community is one of the essential "building blocks" to a successful online student experience. Teaching is an art as much as it is a science; we all benefit from what each person brings to a course and the end result should be a learning environment that supports and encourages all contributions.

Think of how you create a sense of community in your regular F2F classes (bringing food, arriving early or staying late to speak with students, playing music before class starts, etc.). How many of those techniques can you translate into an online course environment? Does the internet provide unique ways of creating a sense of community?

Additional Resources About Building Community:

Journal of Online Learning and Teaching

Key Elements of Building Online Community: Comparing Faculty
and Student Perceptions
Links to an external site.

George Washington University Teaching and Learning Center

Building Community and Interaction Online  Links to an external site.

The videos on this web page reference Blackboard, but Canvas has similar tools for asynchronous and synchronous interactions and communication. 

EdTech DuJour Series

Drs. Heather Farmakis and Melissa Kaulbach address the importance of community-building in online spaces in terms of 3 goals: humanizing your course, building rapport, and fostering learning. As an example of building community, here's a short optional EdTech DuJour YouTube video on retaining online students and how to make them feel welcome in your online class.

https://youtu.be/7cDFKtSwRAo Links to an external site.