Maintaining Course Community

In addition, the following approaches and resources may be useful in designing ways to maintain a collaborative and supportive course community:

  • Web-based documents such as a wiki or synchronous web-based technologies such as Google docs can allow student groups to work collaboratively and provide peer feedback at a distance, allowing them to discuss and iterate on group projects and complete assignments.
  • Mays Imad’s Hope Matters, an article on Inside Higher Education, offers additional ideas about how to sustain and foster student hope and sense of connection, such as creating a space for them to exchange phone numbers and using hopeful and optimistic language when you talk about the future.
  • Larry DeBrock, Norma Scagnoli, and Fataneh Taghaboni-Dutta argue in The Human Element in Online Learning that “online education can be surprisingly intimate,” and offer concrete suggestions for engaging all students and nurturing their bonds with one another and with us.
  • Finally, CATL’s web resource on Trauma-Informed Teaching offers guidance for course design and instructional approaches that reinforce students’ “sense of control, connection, and meaning” to help them thrive after personal or shared trauma (Carello, 2020).

During times of increased stress, tempers may be short, and we are all more susceptible to our own implicit biases. Creating course agreements or guidelines for respectful interaction can help raise everyone’s awareness of supportive and mutually-beneficial communication norms. It may also be helpful to develop a proactive plan for how we might address bias and microaggressions in virtual spaces. Additional mental health resources may be useful to have handy as you find yourself on the front lines of needing to help students who have mental health concerns:

  • Managing anxiety and stress is a helpful resource from the U.S. Center for Disease Control.
  • WellTrack and MindWise are self-screening and self-tracking mental health resources available to Elon students via Counseling Services.
  • Elon’s Counseling Services include individual care and counseling, ongoing support groups, and workshops on a variety of mental health-related topics.
  • Finally, it may be helpful during times of disruption to be even more proactive than usual in referring students to Student Care and Outreach, so that students receive additional support beyond the course context.