Create an impact on learners
Building a safe learning environment is paramount when asking learners to collaborate and participate in authentic learning communities. Some simple steps to develop a positive class identity include:
- Changing the Class Team avatar to something that best represents the class and its unique culture
- Using the announcements feature, an exciting way to make a visually impactful statement within the Posts tab of a Teams channel
- Encouraging learners with celebrations and praise
Class avatars
Educators interested in learning more about building a safe and supportive class community may review this Edutopia article.
The built-in themes offer icons for every subject. In addition to the pre-made avatars, custom avatars may be uploaded. To build a sense of community, have learners select from photos or logos that they submit or even create.
Announcements
The announcements feature helps to make important messages stand out. A few helpful uses for announcements include:
- Draw attention to an upcoming event
- Announce a due date or deadline
- Highlight an important resource
- Send a powerful reminder
When selecting New Conversation, there're options to choose a standard conversation or an announcement. Choosing Announcement not only makes the heading stand out with a bold title, but also permits the addition of a colorful background image. This highlights the announcement in the conversation stream, ensuring that the entire team knows there’s something important they need to know.
Praise
Everyone enjoys receiving praise for a job well done. As educators, we know that every learner is different and, as such, may prefer to receive this recognition in different ways. Class Teams has incorporated a quick, easy way to deliver virtual acclaim either privately in a chat or publicly in a channel.
When learners are working on a long-term project that has been challenging, there may be a group that’s working extra hard or doing a great job of collaborating. Send them praise via the Posts tab or a private message to let them know their efforts have been noticed. Or, consider a Friday praise message that highlights specific learners who displayed a growth mindset, were kind to their classmates, or helped others in a meaningful way during the week.