Teaching Large Classes: Sense of Community

Video Transcript

"Now let's talk about brining a sense of community to your classroom which is what you want to do even in a very large setting. One of the things that you can do to help bring a sense of community to your class is you can remember your student's comments and comment back about them perhaps throughout the course of your lecture, and when you do refer to a student' comments you really want to try to refer to their name as well. Well, like Joan said earlier would be something that you could state, and that gives the students a feeling that you really are paying attention. You really are trying to get to know them and what it is that they're talking about. What they feel, what they think about whatever it is that you're teaching. You can also assign groups and group roles. Sometimes that brings a lot of sense of community. You've got your leader, your recorder, your time keeper. So instead of just a group assignment people have a purpose within those groups and that brings a sense of community to them. You can also ask your students to come in for individual fifteen minute appointments. Now this takes a lot of time but what it shows to the student is that they are important. That you do want to get to know them. That you are willing to take time out of your busy schedule to get to know them and their needs and their concerns and what it is that they want to do with their life and why they're even in your course. And that also brings a sense of community to the classroom. The last thing that can help with this is setting ground rules and enforcing them because by setting ground rules and enforcing them you're showing the class that the class matters and that what you're teaching matters and that can bring the students together, you know, like maybe it's cell phones. Well that, you know, no cell phones. No text messaging. That can bring the students together because they're all in agreement. You know, we all have to follow this rule so that, you know, when somebody doesn't follow the rule there's a sense of community about it. So those are just some of the things that you can do and I encourage you to bring your class together so that, again, they don't just feel like a bunch of numbers."