How do you create a community of learners?

Nina Ellis, Assistant Director, Freshman Seminar

The Freshman Seminar Junior Teaching Assistants (JTA) take ID 409 during the summer/fall interim. Every year, part of our challenge is how to create JTA teams in only a few days with them prior to the launch of Freshman Seminar. This year, we asked the JTAs to complete the bulk of the coursework prior to the beginning of our three-day classroom session. We used a combination of case studies, blogs, threaded discussions, video clips, online lectures, and podcasts to present the content. By presenting the content online, we were able to devote more classroom time to role plays, student group presentations, and discussion groups.

To create more cohesive JTA teams, we assigned all the JTAs assigned to a particular topic to the same group. Then, the majority of the coursework was completed in groups. The culminating assignment was a 60-minute presentation that each group presented during our classroom sessions. In order to accomplish this task, each group was assigned a “Virtual Café” (the Chat room feature) where they could meet virtually. Here, groups brainstormed using the whiteboard, shared presentation files using application sharing, and practiced the presentation using microphones. All of the planning occurred before the students actually met. Having the ability to meet virtually was crucial, because several of the JTAs were out-of-state until the day before the classroom portion began.