Skip to Main Site Navigation Skip to Content Skip to Footer
Back To Top

Building Community

When faculty intentionally build a sense of community in the classroom, it positively impacts student success. The Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of Western Ontario notes that fostering a positive climate and sense of community can improve student learning, persistence/retention, and satisfaction.

Tips and Resources

  • Fostering Community and Belonging: Tips from Cornell University for building community agreements, encouraging student interaction, providing opportunities for students to share information about themselves, and other strategies for fostering a sense of belonging in the classroom.
  • Building Community: Resources and video examples from Harvard's Instructional Moves website on topics such as getting to know your students, modeling norms for active listening and discussion, using humor, creating a safe environment for wrong answers, and prioritizing unheard perspectives.
  • How Can I Foster Community in Class: Tips from the University of Western Ontario on promoting a positive class climate, encouraging peer interactions, and engaging with students.
  • Community Building Strategies: Ideas from Columbia University for incorporating social icebreakers, metacognitive group activities, and content-based activities into class to help build community.
  • Breaking the Ice: Using Icebreakers and Re-energizers with Adult Learners: Article from Adult Learning on the benefits of using icebreakers throughout the semester and a table of suggestions (with references).
  • Twenty-One Teaching Strategies to Promote Student Engagement and Cultivate Classroom Equity: Descriptions of a variety of strategies designed to give students opportunities to reflect and then speak, to encourage and/or demand participation from all students, to build an inclusive classroom community, to cultivate divergent thinking, and to ensure that ALL students are learning. Although the article is specifically aimed at teaching biology, the strategies can be applied in any discipline.
  • Making Office Hours Matter: Reflections from Inside Higher Ed on why students may not take advantage of office hours and strategies for encouraging students to come to office hours.

Listen

  • Building Community in the College Classroom: This Teaching in Higher Ed podcast with the authors of Improving Learning and Mental Health in the College Classroom provides suggestions for building rapport with students.