by Beth Petitjean, Ph.D., Digital Learning Specialist, Reinert Center
How do you define community? How do you define inclusivity? Or, even, how do you know when your class is an engaged, inclusive learning community? We tend to throw these words around a lot, but how often do we really stop and ask ourselves what we mean by them? On the first day of class a few semesters ago, I told my in-person class that they were an “inclusive learning community” who would be working together to understand and discuss the material. Lively conversations before class and during class discussions were signs of this robust community, I told them, and that it made me happy when students were chattering away as I readied the slides before class started. A few weeks later, the only sounds before class were the pings of emails and texts; nobody was talking or interacting with each other in any sort of way. Class discussions became less and less robust as the semester wore on. I chalked it up to everything but what it really was…my assumption that this learning community would happen naturally. If this was happening when my students could see and hear each other at the same time in the same space, how did I expect this to happen naturally when time and space separated the students in my asynchronous distance courses?
Sharla E. Berry addresses this challenge and many more in Creating Inclusive Online Communities: Practices That Support and Engage Diverse Students (2022). She argues that community doesn’t “develop organically” in any format, and that “feelings of community are cultivated through the intentional efforts of students, faculty, and staff to work collaboratively, show up authentically, and participate fully in teaching and learning” [2]. She goes on to identify the core components of community: membership, a sense of belonging, shared collaboration, student engagement, and equity and inclusion [4]. Berry then points out that most frameworks for understanding how online communities work omit inclusivity [5]. Hence, there is potential for marginalized groups to experience even more marginality in online courses than in-person ones, making the intentions of those involved especially crucial.
There are several reasons to appreciate this book. First, Berry writes efficiently and effectively in five chapters that barely exceed one hundred pages total. There is a density of information, but it is clear and understandable. In chapter one, “Defining Community,” Berry foregrounds challenges in online learning for many different marginalized groups, thereby highlighting the tensions that exist. For instance, Berry notes that “LGBTQ students may find the online space to provide a buffer from some of the micro and macro aggressions that occur in person,” [15] before acknowledging that “sexual minority students also experience cyberbullying at rates that are higher than their heterosexual peers” [16]. Chapters two and three center on qualities of a strong online instructor and technology, respectively, while chapters four and five offer practices specific to asynchronous or synchronous courses.
Second, because of the brevity and focus of each chapter, readers are not constrained to read the book sequentially. This makes it useful to dip into a section that is relevant now and skip others that are not needed presently. I found this particularly helpful as most of my courses are asynchronous, so I could read chapter four more closely and save chapter five on synchronous courses for another time. Even though these last two chapters focus on course formats, chapter three includes a wealth of insight on the role technology plays in aiding or hindering community in specific formats. For example, Berry asserts, “Discussion boards, which have become a mainstay of asynchronous courses, allow for peer-to-peer interaction and can contribute to students’ sense of community in an asynchronous course” [39]. However, the tension is still there as Berry reminds the reader later, “unless instructors intentionally develop community-building activities into asynchronous courses, deep connections between peers can be difficult for students to develop” [42, 44].
Third, the book includes numerous tables and figures that offer quick and convenient resources about specific points in the chapters. Although all the tables are helpful, two stood out to me: Table 1.2, Strategies for Creating Community for Historically Marginalized and Underrepresented students [19], offers clear strategies instructors can incorporate into their course design; and Table 2.2, Collaborative Activities that Support Community [28], helps when planning assessments. Collectively, the tables show the reader that Berry made a conscious decision to create a book that instructors and designers can return to again and again.
Finally, in a brief appendix, Berry reminds the reader of the differences between emergency remote instruction and regular distance teaching. Although the technology and materials used in both may be the same, they are very different in intention. We cannot approach regular distance teaching that is planned and scheduled in the same way we did when we had to pivot from in-person to online seemingly overnight in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of us may have had less than positive experiences with emergency remote instruction; however, as Berry shows throughout this entire book, distance teaching and learning can be a highly effective and rewarding experience for students and instructors alike.
References:
Berry, Sharla. Creating Inclusive Online Communities: Practices that Support and Engage Diverse Students. Sterling, VA: Stylus, 2022.
The Notebook 