Classroom Community

Classroom community is vital to student success. One of the keys to an inclusive, collaborative classroom community is forming connections between students and with the instructor. These connections begin by learning about each other and including all diverse individuals so that each student feels valued and safe to share their ideas to learn together. I not only foster a collegial learning community in the classroom, but I also empower students to succeed by highlighting their talents, listening and responding to student needs, and providing a welcoming environment.

Learn more about my classroom community below.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion page from my courses.

Equity and Inclusion

The initial contact with students sets the tone for equity and inclusivity in the classroom. To do this I have a diversity, equity, and inclusion page in the START HERE module for all my courses. (This diversity page in Canvas has been shared with many other instructors at Edmonds College.) It immediately says to students "You are important to me!". It also introduces students to the inclusive practices and diversity content in the course and at the college.

Inclusive practices

In addition to the diversity content in my courses, it is also important to get to know students individually and incorporate inclusive policies in my courses. In the first week of the quarter, even in online classes, I get to know my students in an introductory discussion forum, much like the way you got to know me in the beginning of the Getting to Know Me section of this portfolio. This initial attention to each student sets the stage for building classroom community and also allows students to get to know each other. In this and subsequent discussion forums, I make sure to include tips on discussion forum etiquette so that students contribute content with inclusivity in mind.

In the course content, it is important that students can relate to their individuality. It has been shown that students relate better when they can see examples of people similar to themselves. Because my course content relates to the human body, I can use diverse examples to explain the anatomy and physiology content and I make deliberate choices when giving images or examples to include a range of ethnicity, gender, age, and nationalities in my teaching. Learn more about the diversity curriculum on the curriculum development page.

As you learned previously in my instruction page, I embrace student diversity and accessibility so that learning barriers are removed for all students using teaching strategies including universal design for learning that provide student-centered options for learning and demonstrating mastery of course material, such as in the assessment section of the portfolio with project-based assessments.

Instructor Interaction: Regular Substantive Interaction

Regular substantive interaction means that the instructor is predictably responding to students and providing feedback. In an online class, like BIOL& 175, this is done with instructor access by providing regular office hours and alternative ways to contact the instructor, feedback from assessments, such as in discussion forums, and intrusive check-ins to seek early interventions for students to overcome learning barriers and provide encouragement and empowering student success.

Student Support

Instructor interaction with students involves providing follow-up feedback to help them understand the course material better. With interactive formative assessments, discussion forum feedback, and surveys/polling I am able to address learning barriers, reflect and reevaluate lesson content for common misconceptions, and help students understand questions they have about the material. This also allows me to adjust my teaching for future classes by seeing where students have issues learning the course content. In the curriculum development and assessment sections of this portfolio, you will see examples of how I use data from these student polls to reflect and adjust my course content and assessments.

In addition to instruction, students are often needing academic and career advising. Not only do I hold advising hours individually each quarter, but I often work with a team of STEM faculty to hold group advising sessions for healthcare careers. In addition, as you will learn in the curriculum development section, I even take this academic and career advising into my BIOL& 241/242 courses. These advising opportunities support students in their transfer pathways and learning more about their intended careers.

Instructor Access

In order for students to have a connection with the instructor, there needs to be a regular, predictable way to contact the instructor outside class. Typically this is through office hours and email. In addition to email and office hours, students can contact me on the Remind app. The Remind app allows students to use texting or email to immediately get real-time answers to their questions. Having multiple ways for students to contact the instructor allows multiple avenues to ask questions and get feedback to aid their learning. Students regularly comment in course evaluations that access to me and my quick response time to student questions is one of my strengths.

In addition, sometimes students may miss assignments or have other learning barriers that occur and may be reluctant to reach out themselves for help. I make sure to be intentional and connect to students to check-in with them for missed assignments, to encourage their continued success, and offer feedback and assistance on assignments based on interactive formative assessments using emails and the Remind app. I also use a weekly check-in that I initially learned about in my collaborative interactions from my OSCQR review (Credit: Debbie Kuhlmann) in my online courses as a way for students to connect with me at the beginning of each week to let me know of any concerns or issues that may affect their learning or their schedule. As a result of these different intentional strategies, students often feel a connection and many times I can empower students to exceed their potential or even mitigate any learning barriers early to help students.

Example of Weekly Check-in for students

Student-Student Interaction: Cooperative Learning

Forming Student Groups

Part of having strong student-student interactions is to lay the groundwork for what constitutes appropriate group behavior. I share a document on Canvas for students about how to work in groups that includes an introduction to the importance of teamwork in the classroom, working with diverse student populations by eliminating bias and creating a welcoming environment for students in the group, expectations on participation, and tips on how to meet in groups.

I also make sure to be thoughtful in how students are divided into groups. There are several ways in which I will divide students into groups including self-selection based on schedules or topic interest, random pairing, and instructor-generated based on commonalities, such as common career goals and shared strengths. I also make sure groups are diverse and address any group dynamics that occur. I also recognize some students are introverted and prefer learning individually. I work together with these students to make sure they are given a choice to work individually or in a smaller group dynamic they feel comfortable learning with.

Students are also required to complete a group contract where they determine as a group each student's role, timelines for project stage completion, contact information, student schedules for meeting, and strategies for students who are not participating. Once these contracts are signed, I review the contracts and address any issues with the groups and approve their contracts as part of the project grade.

Group Activities

Research has shown that students learn and retain information better when discussed with other students and forms a core strategy in active learning classes. Some of the types of cooperative learning that occurs in my classes include project-based assessments as described in the assessments page, pedagogy strategies such as active learning on my instruction page, and small group activities, such as telemedicine in labs.

One example of a telemedicine activity is in BIOL& 241 where we study the regional anatomy. This is particularly an important format for the assignment in the hyflex modality as students do not have access to the 3D models in the lab. In the picture below, students in person are working with students attending class synchronously on Zoom (The student holding the bones in the picture is sharing the bones with the online students on her computer.) to complete the lab activity to identify the bones in the pectoral girdle and arms region. I randomly give students in person a few bones from the area we are studying, as if they are forensic pathologists trying to identify bones from a grave site. Together with the online students, the in person students identify the bones and determine whether these are right or left and the names of the bones. Once they identify the bones, students then label a diagram with the bony landmarks to help identify these structures where muscles attach to the bones. This diagram would be similar to charting the information on a patient record in real-world situations.

Students collaborating with online synchronous students to complete a telemedicine activity.

Student Feedback

Read some of the student comments from my course evaluations discussing my classroom community.

Select the button below to continue to examine my teaching dossier by returning to the last section of the courses taught page about the anatomy and physiology courses I taught.

Courses Taught

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