Onboarding/Welcome/Initiation

If HPL concentrates on co-creating a sense of community with students as they enter their first HGSE experience, this sense of community will be more present throughout the entire course.

Sense of Belonging: How can students be invited into the course in a welcoming way that draws on their gifts as people?

Recommendations:

• Concentrate on creating onboarding processes that welcome the learner into the community, familiarize the learner with the community, and provide support for them to enter the process of co-ownership.

• Offer a synchronous welcome or initiation event in which students are formally invited into the community.

• Offer resources, suggestions, and supports to help them make the most out of the community.

  • Include students in the conversation about co-ownership and vision for the community ahead.

  • Offer students opportunities to reflect on their particular strengths as learners and create a "Personal Highlights Reel" so they are better equipped to create a positive social identity as they enter the course.

  • Create a low-lift Flipgrid or other video service assignment where students introduce themselves and share one fun thing about them. Place a 15 second limit on the video so that students can begin to put names to faces and have a low-lift, fun experience of watching videos.

• Provide a variety of supports for students to get support in onboarding. Examples: fixed Live FAQ Sessions 2x weekly for HPL onboarding for first two weeks, a devoted #FAQ Slack channel, Ask me Anything hours.

• Create discussion prompts that allow students to be involved in the process of vision casting for the community. Discussion prompts or conversations with TFs can help students to understand that they are the arbiters of community

• Support groups for students, according to special need or generally (i.e, international or students, people with families to look after, etc.)

• #FAQ Slack channel for students to ask questions.

Shared Experiences

• Use synchronous modalities in events that benefit from social presence.

• Create virtual "Student Lounge" spaces with Zoom rooms where members can drop in and meet up with other students

• Find ways to embed students' gifts and talents in the course through Slack channels and other embedding and support.

• In general, find more opportunities for students to share out about what they themselves and what do; center course concepts to their own experience. Events which showcase students' experiences.

Course Content

Principle #2: Provide many opportunities throughout for shared ownership of the course and its content.

Principle #3: Center students' work and unique experience in the course. Create opportunities for members to create or share content that is personally meaningful to them.

• Encourage students to form small groups and affinity groups. Support student-organized events that give students opportunities to share about who they are and what they do.

Discussion Prompts

• Consider the inherent differences of technological platforms when designing discussion prompts.

• Seek to create prompts and arrangements of students that are meaningful and engaging. Larger group "cross-pollination" may be good for content-focused material, but thoughtful introductions that require members to reflect on their own experience may seem to get lost in the vast discussion space and may work better in small groups.

• Offer members more ways to initiate the conversation, such as allowing for different types of responses, or creating an alternative discussion area where students ask their own discussion prompt to other students. (*High-lift version - Jigsaw course content and questions according to student interest. For instance, if 4 TF groups were placed in a single discussion, each group could decide one or two questions to ask to classmates.

• Create concurrent discussion opportunities to ideate around the Module project (more on that here)

Rules, Roles, and Responsibilities

• Rules: Invite students to co-create rules, possibly in TF groups, or ask them to agree to pre-determined rules when entering the community.

• Responsibilities: Always connect students' responsibilities in the community back to course values and goals, such as supporting other students' learning

• Roles: Community members' roles should be complementary. Students are responsible for engaging in community, TFs are responsible for making sure students have support to engage in community, and Instructors are responsible for modeling community engagement and creating connections.

Rituals

Principle: Be intentional about rituals. Have some type of intentional and thoughtful ritual which speaks to the value of the course for the beginning, middle, and end of the course.

• • Examples:

  • Beginning Ritual: Have a welcome ‘toast’ that brings students together into two or three large groups. Have them bring a drink of some significance to them and share out briefly in small breakout groups.

  • Middle Ritual: Around Module 3 or whenever talking about the project, send an email or communication that explains that in this part of the course, peoples’ experience and efforts as mentors will be very important.

  • End Ritual: Call students together in some synchronous way to thank them for their participation in the course and its community. Grant them some symbol or token, like an HPL pin, that they can now wear henceforth signifying their participation and membership in the community.

• Explore ideas for ritual actions to enhance events like discussions - such as always offering a compliment before providing constructive criticism.

Exit Trajectory

• Have a concrete exit ritual.

• Use Alumni community

• Use student surveys to offer research/class-based recommendations for students, moving forward.

• Create an enduring community presence that connects the HPL projects between annual iterations.

• Decide on a Slack community lifetime. Recommendation: Keep Slack enduring. Allow it to remain as a resource.

• Recommendation: Politely remove dropout students from the HPL Slack following the experience but not during the course.