Monday, July 8, 2024

12:45 PM - 4:15 PM

Room 310, Flinders University City Campus, Festival Plaza

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Overview

Room 310 - Level 3

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Details

Facilitators Assoc Prof Karin Watson, UNSW Sydney Mr Collins Fleischner, UNSW Sydney Dr Nicole Saintilan, UNSW Sydney Aim In Australia’s tertiary education sector, higher participation rates, the increasing diversity of the student population and declining government funding are key challenges in supporting students’ sense of belonging. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the normalisation of new flexible modes of study (i.e., hyflex, hybrid, blended, online, muti-modal, face-to-face) has created a more fragmented student cohort, making it difficult to create a connected learning community.  The goal of this research study was to explore the variety of techniques that educators use to foster a sense of belonging and community in their various classrooms. Focus This workshop is for academic staff and those who support teaching. It aims to incite discussion regarding the nature of belonging and the roles that teachers and students have in fostering belonging in the post-COVID classroom. It will also provide participants with principles and strategies that they can incorporate into their own practice and environments to improve students’ sense of belonging. Overview The workshop will present the research outcomes of a recent study at UNSW, which used the ‘learning community’ question in the university’s internal student evaluations of learning and teaching data to identify areas of good practice. These research outcomes have been gamified, giving workshop participants a fun way to engage with different teaching practices and ideas. Workshop plan The workshop will first outline the research project and its findings. Workshop participants will then be invited to form small groups to play a bespoke card game. The game, based on verbatim from the research study, will engage participants with key principles that underpin a greater sense of student belonging in courses and classrooms, as well as the breadth of teaching strategies academics can use to foster belonging. The game is also designed to show the limitations of and challenges to fostering belonging, in that not every technique will foster belonging in the same way, even if they share that common thread of teacher care. In turn, the game is designed to also elicit ideas from participants about other principles and techniques they think educators can incorporate in their practice, in order to foster a greater sense of belonging for their students.