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#iteachmsu Community Norms and Practices
The #iteachmsu Commons is an inclusive community. In order to cultivate and maintain a space where we all feel comfortable sharing ideas, questions, and resources, we have developed this set of norms and practices.
If you feel that there is something missing from these standards that is essential to our community, please let us know.

We value a diverse community and inclusive language, interactions, and practices. We’re all here to learn. 




We will work to promote an anti-discriminatory environment where everyone feels safe and welcome. Accordingly, each of us has the right to be addressed in a way that aligns with our personal identity.
Discriminatory language or imagery is not tolerated. 
We welcome linguistic diversity while recognizing the public nature of the platform and the sharing capacity. 
Content that is shared will be formatted for accessibility. For your support, review this Basic Accessibility Checklist when creating content.
We all value learning and are supportive of our community members as we expand our knowledge together. We all make mistakes and that's okay. If someone shares a misconception, question, etc., we will respond in a constructive, non-critical way.




We believe in the power and importance of sharing responsibly.




We encourage each other. We ask questions. We answer questions. We provide feedback and resources to deepen our understanding.
When an idea is not yours originally, a proper attribution and/or citation should be provided.
Copyright and Fair Use guidelines should be adhered to. Need support to determine if you’re following them? Contact MSU Libraries’ Copyright Office.




This is a learning community built by members, for members.



Search the site before adding new/reduplicated content.
Use a title and description that provides an accurate reflection of what your article, post, assessment, etc. covers.
Use the tagging feature to label/categorize your content and improve the search experience. 
Select the appropriate/relevant group to share your content to.

The Community of Inquiry framework proposed by Garrison, Anderson, and Archern (2000) identifies three dimensions to support a social constructivist model of learning. Research suggests that building these three dimensions into your course will help to support the learning experience for your students. 
 
Cognitive Presence
Cognitive presence refers to the way your students might construct meaning in your course. This happens when they have the chance to be curious, explore, and have an "ah-ha" moment. You'll see this when they're able to connect and apply new ideas from the course. The important steps you'll need to take to support cognitive presence are to carefully select content for your course and support discourse. You can help to build this into your course by providing multiple opportunities for students to explore and engage with material that will help them to understand the big ideas. You can accomplish this in your course by providing different options for engaging with the content, such as reading texts, watching videos, and completing learning activities and various assessments. 
 
Social Presence
Social presence refers to the way your students might present themselves to the class. This happens when students have opportunities to openly communicate in class, and are free to express emotions in a risk-free environment. To encourage this, you should support the discourse and set the climate for discussion. You can support this by providing opportunities for interaction and collaboration amongst students and by modeling the kinds of behaviors they should follow. You can accomplish this by asking students to introduce themselves, either in a live zoom meeting or on the course discussion board. Set parameters for students to engage in discussion in both the asynchronous and synchronous environments. For example, in a synchronous zoom meeting you might direct students to post in the chat to answer a question and set breakout rooms for students to engage with their peers. Or, you might direct students to complete an assignment in a small group, and direct them to use an asynchronous discussion board to chat and plan their assignment. 
 
Teaching Presence 
Teaching presence refers to your structure and process, including how you will provide direct instruction to your students and build understanding. This means selecting the content, identifying the topics for discussion, and keeping the discussion focused on those topics. It will also help if you set the social climate and provide clear instructions for how students should engage with and respond to these discussions. You can easily accomplish this with discussion forums related to course topics, with targeted discussion questions in your online course. What are some other ways you might accomplish this?
 
 


Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T, & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2, 87–105

 

"Community of Inquiry Model" by jrhode is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

This article talks about the benefits of being involved with a community outside of grad school and offers practical tips to help.

For many instructors, COVID revealed unintentional barriers to learning in the classroom. Perhaps it was inflexible attendance policies, or grading policies that focused on behavior and concealed true learning, or hidden curriculum that privileged students who were willing to ask for more time / credit / help over students too embarrassed to do so.  
The equitable pedagogy learning community will welcome educators looking to dismantle these barriers. By creating learning environments where all students feel supported, all students can succeed. Students enter our classrooms with different backgrounds, perspectives, identities, and experiences, and the intellectual communities we form can be enriched by those differences.  
As a community, we will read and discuss topics such as humanizing the classroom, equitable grading practices, Universal Design for learning, culturally responsive pedagogy, pedagogy of kindness, and similar themes. The goal for each member would be to develop and integrate changes to teaching practices to be more inclusive and equitable. As a community, we would like to create resources to share with instructors; this could look like a collection of reflections from the community members and/or easily digestible professional development documents like infographics.  If you are interested in joining this learning community, find us on Microsoft Teams or contact Valerie Hedges (hedgesva@msu.edu) or Casey Henley (mcgove14@msu.edu). The community will meet the third Friday of every month from 10-11:30 both in person (room TBD) and on Zoom. Every other month (October, December, February, April) we will meet at 9:00 in Synder-Phillips for breakfast. For the fall semester, we will read Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto by Kevin Gannon. 

The Community Resource Directory lists resources for MSU students, staff, and faculty pertaining to financial challenges, including information on home foreclosures, debt relief, food banks, health care, and public assistance.

Topic Area: Student Success
Presented by: Perry Fittrer, Jonglim Han, Christina Bridges, Dominique Devereaux
Abstract:
This session will present how three different student success programs maintained student sense of belonging and community in a virtual setting. The Detroit MADE Scholars, Dow STEM Scholars and TRIO Student Support Services programs are all cohort based student support programs housed within the Neighborhood Student Success Collaborative unit. Each program strives to close opportunity gaps for a variety of underserved student populations. Through the pandemic each program has utilized creative and unique forms of student engagement to keep students connected to MSU and program communities. This session will explore the importance of community, sense of belonging, and identity to student success while providing examples of program specific and collaborative efforts to provide these elements virtually.
Session Resources:
Developing and Sustaining Community-NSSC Path (PDF)

Michigan State University is a big place. Literally. The campus itself is 5,192 acres (just over 8 square miles). Over 900 registered student organizations exist, along with over 60 greek organizations, 275+ study abroad opportunities, and a student-run organic farm; and that’s just co-curriculars! MSU offers more than 200 programs of undergraduate, graduate and professional study across 17 degree-granting colleges. It takes A LOT of human capacity to support Spartans. MSU has over 13,000 employees - many of whom are educators of some kind!
In such a large organization, it can be difficult to find others with common interests, share ideas and reflections, and ultimately elevate small successful approaches to larger audiences. Here on the #iteachmsu Commons, you can join or create an informal learning community through the site’s Group function! Groups can be public where anyone with a MSU netID can op-in to joining, or private where members have to be invited to join. Already there are groups related to topics like online and remote teaching, accessible course design, and new technologies. Were you looking for a group but didn’t find one that matched your interests? Any logged in user can start their own group; the only required information is a group name, brief description, image, and which category most represents the group. In a group, the feed can be used for group-specific dialogue, where users can post and respond to one another. Additionally, once a public group is created, any member can share content (articles, posts, playlists) specifically to that group! For step-by-step instructions on building a group, visit the Creating a Group article in the Getting Started resources.
If you’re looking for a more structured Learning Community experience look no further than our colleagues at the Office of Faculty and Academic Staff Development (formerly Academic Advancement Network)! According to their website, “Learning Communities provide safe and supportive spaces for complicated conversations about curriculum and pedagogy. Michigan State University has supported these initiatives since 2004 and continues to do so through a funding program administered by the Office of Faculty and Academic Staff Development. All communities, however, share three things in common: they meet monthly across the academic year, explore important educational themes, and welcome all members of MSU’s instructional staff, regardless of rank or discipline.” To access a current list of the Learning Communities supported by the Office of Faculty and Academic Staff Development, check out this Learning Community webpage! (Some of the 2021-2022 Learning Communities have even created #iteachmsu Groups! Check out the "Reading Group for Student Engagement and Success" as one example.)

To learn more about some community building resources for your online course, please explore these activities from Equity Unbound and OneHE: https://oneheglobal.org/equity-unbound/.
 
Michelle Pacansky-Brock has written extensively about humanizing the experience of learning online. To learn more about humanizing your course, please explore these resources from Michelle Pacansky-Brock:
https://brocansky.com/humanizing
 
Check out Pixel Park for some creative zoom warm-ups: https://thepixelpark.com/4-zoom-friendly-creative-warm-ups/
 
The Linden School has a series of Hybrid Learning Models addressing different learning scenarios and the role of the teacher, students in class, and students at home: https://x78251kcpll2l2t9e46kf96a-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Hybrid-Learning-Models-Linden.pdf.