Building Community in the Classroom - this is a presentation from a workshop for faculty at the American University in Cairo and has sample activities one can do to build community at various times in the semester.

1. Building Community in
the Classroom
Maha Bali, PhD
Associate Professor of Practice,
Center for Learning & Teaching,
American University in Cairo
Image by Scott Maxwell via Flickr CC-By-SA
https://www.flickr.com/photos/lumaxart/2137737248/in/photostream/

2. Chocolate Activity
Chocolate box image: Jonathan Reyes CC-BY-NC via Flickr:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jpaxonreyes/5442938096/

3. Tell us about yourself…
• If you picked a galaxy jewel: tell us something you
think you share in common with many others in the
room
• If you picked Ferrero: tell us something you think is
unique about yourself
• If you picked something else: tell us something you
think most people in the room didn’t know about
you

4. Reflection
• Why do you think I used chocolate?
• As a community-building strategy, which is a better
pedagogical choice: Ferrero or Galaxy Jewels?
• When would chocolate be a bad strategy
altogether?
• I will share how/why I use this activity in my own
classes

5. Workshop Outcomes
During this workshop, I hope you will:
• Experience diverse community-building activities
that can be used for different purposes at different
times during a semester
• Explore possible ways to adapt or create new
community-building activities for your objectives in
your classes

6. Exercise: Why & How?
• Why would you want to build community in the
classroom?
• What do you currently do to build community?
Strategies, ideas, etc..
• What kind of challenges do you face?
• Share with group on your table

7. OPPORTUNITYISNOWHERE
• What do you see?
• Different ways/purposes for this
exercise?
• Things can sometimes go wrong…

8. My Why & How
• My reasons for building community in
my classes
• How I get my ideas:
o Internet  including google search and my PLN
o Corporate world
o Other workshops/teaching (e.g. FYE at AUC, some teacher
handbooks)
o I make many of them up (e.g. the chocolate activity we
just did)

9. Role of Community
• “There are three facets of a classroom and
school environment: 1) the physical
environment, 2) the emotional environment,
and, 3) the academic environment… To
establish a positive classroom climate, safe
emotional environment, and to begin
building community immediately requires
deliberate, conscious planning and
strategies.”
• Anne Shaw (2013, August 13), Director, 21st Century Schools, “Back to School Strategoy
Building Community” Edutopia article: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/back-to-school-strategy-
building-community-anne-shaw

10. Building Community: 3 levels
• student-student (one on one)
• student-teacher
• student-teacher-class (all of us as a
group, whether the entire group or
smaller groups)

11. Building community
during strategic times:
• First day of class
• First 5-10 minutes of class
• Online in-between classes
• Other?
• How about…. All the time???

12. Suggestion…
• To make the most of this workshop, as we go:
For each activity/idea/exercise we do, you might like
to think/write about:
• Can I use this in my classroom? If not, why not?
• How might I modify/extend this for my classroom?
• What kind of challenges would this pose?

13. Getting to Know Individuals
Ingredients of Me, from my blog:
http://blog.mahabali.me/blog/just-for-fun/ingredients-of-me/

14. Small/Large Group
Activities
• Jeopardy Game: Name the Game
Game (very simple)
o I used it in my own class to test pre-knowledge and start
students thinking about the topic we’ll be taking for the rest
of the semester
• Get outside…
• Scavenger Hunt activity: Twitter
Scavenger Hunt
o Meet a learning outcome by having students play in pairs
or small groups – outside the classroom

15. Ice-breakers/Conversation Starters
• Conversation starter: Learning is like
flowers; OERs are like food
• Brainstorming: 1+1>2
• Props e.g. digital citizenship toolkit

16. Community Online
• Discussion forums, blogs, wikis (ideas in other
workshop)
• Opportunities for personalization
• Continuous (not limited to class time)
• Some students more comfortable online
(e.g. shy face to face)
• Room for 100% participation
Image: Social media art: by mkhmarketing via Flickr CC-BY
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mkhmarketing/8468788107

17. Beyond Activities
• Giving students space:
o What choices over topics can you give students?
o What choices over modes can you give
students?
o How much room for decision-making can you
give them?
o Consider relevance
o Consider how students can support each other
o Consider how to reduce competition

18. Exercise: for your course
• Think of a learning outcome or class activity that
might benefit from including/converting a
community activity or ice breaker

19. Challenges
• What’s on your mind?
• Time – but can you afford not to?
• Diversity in the class vs. seniors in the same major
• Some student attitudes
• Trust takes time to build, you can’t force it

20. Thank You
Questions?
bali@aucegypt.edu