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Digital Education Studio

Acting intentionally and generously to create vibrant learning communities

Jo Elliott

How do we build a learning community, in which all learners feel welcomed and empowered to contribute to discussions and shared learning?

Productive learning communities, and the senses of belonging, safety and trust required for them to thrive, can take time to develop – and in a 12-week semester (or sometimes even less), we have little time to waste. So how do we get ‘beyond the ice-breaker’ to create vibrant and dynamic learning communities?

As a learning designer I spend a lot of time thinking about how we create effective learning communities. We need to consider and plan how we create learning communities in any teaching context but in online learning, it becomes even more important – online learners are more vulnerable to feelings of isolation and disconnection from the university and their peers, and they don’t necessarily get the ‘incidental’ contact with us and with other students that can occur on campus.

Two ideas that have resonated with me recently are Maha Bali and Mia Zamora’s (2022) concept of ‘intentionally equitable hospitality’ and Priya Parker’s (2018) notion of ‘generous authority’. Both of these ideas focus on live gatherings and workshops, but their principles can also be applied in asynchronous learning environments.

Both ideas put educators in the role of host – we have created the learning space, whether it be a live class or our module site, and we are responsible for welcoming students into it. Intentionally equitable hospitality calls on us to think about ‘for whom the space is hospitable and for whom it is not’ (Bali and Zamora, 2022). It is an iterative process, with a focus on social justice – we might be able to identify some groups of students who might not feel at ease ahead of time, but we need to keep paying attention and be open to noticing barriers we might not initially have thought of. Bali and Zamora emphasise the need to interrogate our own positionality and to ‘reckon with the limits of [our] understanding of other people’s lives’.

Intentionally equitable hospitality practices include:

  • Ensuring everyone has a chance to express themselves, but giving learners agency to choose how to do that;
  • Allowing learners to choose or suggest topics for discussion, and to choose or change the direction of conversation;
  • Including opportunities for informal conversation and interaction, perhaps before or after a scheduled session or alongside more structured and targeted discussion forums;
  • Including asynchronous/semi-synchronous spaces for interaction alongside or in between live sessions;
  • Prioritising listening to more marginalised voices, including creating space for those voices to be heard.

By now, it might be evident that their ideas have strong resonance with QMUL’s inclusive curriculum principles.

Parker’s (2018) notion of ‘generous authority’ argues that welcoming people into the space we’ve created includes ensuring that we make clear the purpose of our gathering together and expectations of, and for, participants (learners). She notes that communicating our purpose and expectations for our time together should start from the time that our participants become aware of the gathering. Of course in teaching, we might not have control over that – our students will likely know they’ll be learning in our module long before we get a chance to connect with them. But we can start preparing them early, making use of a Welcome or on-boarding week. A welcome video or message with an overview of the module and what you’ll be doing together goes a long way. Clear guidance on how to get the most out of the module can help set expectations – but don’t forget to also make clear what students can expect from you and any other staff involved with the module. I like to include a checklist of recommended tasks for the on-boarding week to help students prepare for the semester – watch the welcome video, read the tips for getting the most out of the module, check out the assessment information and put the due dates in their diaries, make sure they know where to find the learning materials for week 1, and post an introduction to themselves so they can start getting to know one another (Padlet is great for this!). In TELT’s recent webinar on insights from their TELT student ambassadors, Ellie shared how much it helped her when one of her lecturers started the module by walking students through the module site to explain where to find things and how the module would work.

Exercising ‘generous authority’ also involves ensuring that boundaries are respected. You might have set some boundaries for students, or perhaps you have negotiated or co-created some ‘rules of engagement’ as a group. Once they are set, it is our responsibility to protect students, respecting their time and efforts and our shared purpose as a learning community, by enforcing them. Keep an eye on discussions and step in if things are going off track and away from the agreed purpose. Make sure students know how they can tell you if they think a boundary has been crossed or things have gone off track – and act on it.

While the concepts of intentionally equitable hospitality and generous authority may not have been developed with teaching – especially online, asynchronous teaching – in mind, they still can teach us a lot about building inclusive and vibrant learning communities. By applying these principles and being mindful of how we design, and welcome learners into, our learning spaces, whether physical or virtual, we can create collaborative learning environments in which all students can thrive and build knowledge together.

References

Bali, M and Zamora, M. (2022). Intentionally equitable hospitality and critical instructional design. In Quinn, J, Burtis, M, Jhangiani, S and Denial, CJ (Eds). Designing for Care. Hybrid Pedagogy Inc. Available at https://pressbooks.pub/designingforcare/chapter/intentionally-equitable-hospitality-as-critical-instructional-design/

Parker, P. (2018). The art of gathering: How we meet and why it matters. Riverhead Books.

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