This session outlines how two online programs at a small private residential university create belonging and promote university involvement before, during, and after the learning experience. Calling on expertise from student affairs and instructional design, see how you can infuse university culture into your global classroom.

Are you a learning designer? Do you work in student affairs? Stop scrolling because this session is for you (we promise!). The TLDR: Attend our session to learn how to inspire community across online platforms in your global classroom. If this sounds like something you are passionate about, join us for this fun, engaging session. There are many benefits to being an online student, but at times it can also feel incredibly isolating. We all spend a lot of time on Zoom, Teams, etc., making it easy to fall into a routine where students do not interact with the university. Creating a community with classmates, faculty, and staff encourages students to reach out when they need help or have questions, ultimately allowing them to succeed in the program or course they are enrolled in. You may be asking, how do you create an authentic community in the online learning space? This session will explore how our organization built a curriculum and student affairs approach that inspires students to stay connected to the university while taking courses and after graduation. When tasked with building online education at our university, we knew that students were our biggest stakeholders. With that in mind, we decided to ensure that all aspects of our programs and courses were consistent and innovative. We had to learn how to build an online program and stand-alone courses that were impactful and representative of our university. To achieve that, learning designers and student affairs teams work closely to create a meaningful learning experience that weaves the university mission through every course while also adhering to learning design best practices and pedagogy. Whether an undergraduate student takes a stand-alone course to fulfill a degree requirement or a working professional goes back to earn their master’s degree, we want to ensure that they will leave with a sense of knowledge and belonging. In this session, we want to inspire innovation and new ideas by highlighting what has worked well for us and what lessons we have learned. This time will also give us the chance to hear from others in the room about what strategies they have used, allowing us to brainstorm ideas that you can take back to your institution. You’ll leave this session with our top five tips for creating student engagement through learning design and, hopefully, a new community of peers with whom you can continue learning. A note about our presentation: As both presenters are cisgender, white women at a predominantly white institution, we will begin our presentation by acknowledging our positionality and calling attention to the fact that our experience in building relationships with students, faculty, staff, and administration is inevitably shaped by being members of majority groups. Ahead of our presentation, we will invite colleagues from our CTL to review our presentation materials to help avoid any unseen biases in the language we use and the examples we provide. As a team committed to following Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles in the design of learning experiences, we will ensure our presentation materials also follow these principles.