Short Description:
Refers to the intellectual, social, emotional, and physical environment in which students learn. Instructors who intentionally create a safe space and foster a community of learners find that students are more engaged.
Details for Implementation
From the first day, intentionally create a welcoming learning space where students feel valued and confident. Be intentional in letting your students know they have earned their place in the classroom, that they belong, that their ideas, experiences, and opinions matter.
A simple way to foster a supportive classroom climate in an online course is to ensure that students can find your content. When the course structure is consistent with logically organized modules and materials, students can focus on learning the course content rather than finding material in the course. Use the VTSU Course Template to ensure consistent organization and navigation.
Use the self-reflection rubric as you consider your own teaching practice and use of instructional strategies. Download the file to get started.
Classroom climate is fundamentally an interpersonal experience which regulates the learning experience and is established whether you are intentional about it or not. Students feel more invested in the class and their learning if they feel like they belong and are a member of a learning community that cares about them and their ideas. “In terms of college, sense of belonging refers to students’ perceived social support on campus, a feeling or sensation of connectedness, and the experience of mattering or feeling cared about, accepted, respected, valued by, and important to the campus community or others on campus such as faculty, staff, and peers” (Strayhorn, 2019, p. 5). Social support and your actions (and the actions of students’ peers) should signal to students that they belong.
Students intend to succeed. Communicate your belief in their success. Establish an appropriate communicative environment between you and your students. Remember that part of your communication with students is related to your content and part of it should is interpersonal (whether it is voiced or interpreted). Develop appropriate relationships with your students and incorporate teaching practices that build instructor-student rapport.
Student-Student Rapport
We are constantly scanning our environment for cues that tell us if we are connected to others around us. We watch others’ body language for nods, affirmations, smiles, grimacing, head turns. Help students find skills and language to be inclusive of their peers while still maintaining appropriate boundaries. Incorporate teaching practices that build student-student rapport
Student Belonging by Identity Group
For students with disabilities, increases in scholastic competence, which included mastery of course work were associated with an increased sense of belonging over the span of the first year (Vaccaro & Newman, 2015).
While intrinsic motivation for attending college increases likelihood of a sense of belonging for all students, some research shows that extrinsic motivation is a significant factor for first-generation students compared with their non-first-generation peers. Extrinsic factors might include “staying close to home and maintaining positive prosocial ties to their community after college” (Thibodeaux & Samson, 2021, p. 132). When institutions acknowledge and validate these extrinsic factors, they affirm to first-generation students a sense of belonging. Additional approaches to ensuring a sense of belonging for first-generation students include publicly celebrating and telling stories of students, staff, and faculty who are first in their family to attend college and making explicit connections between students’ career goals and the positive impact they could have on their home communities (Thibodeaux & Samson, 2021).
Students from modest socioeconomic backgrounds may have a heightened awareness of their social experience and use comparisons with peers to define whether or not they belong in higher education. Additionally, orientation and other deliberate welcoming interventions for new students that explain university culture and expectations increase a sense of belonging for students with modest incomes by making them feel like equal members of the community (Fernández, Ryan, & Begeny, 2023).