0.2 Structural challenges  (Page 27/2)

The "Three C's" are an informal subset of the Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education [Chickering and Gamson, 1987 AAHE Bulletin] believed to be essential in providing the foundation for the implementation of Diversity Harnessing.The term was created by Schmitz in the National Science Foundation Grant DUE-0942331 after recognizing the similarity between the terms used to summarize the required course structure and the "Three R's" of education and believing that connection would make these underlying principles memorable.

The three c's

• Community
• Collaboration
• Accountability

Community

For a small enrollment course, community is not difficult to obtain. Yet, many lecturers fail to take advantage of doing so by applying the proper techniques. An instructor must take time from "traditional" lecturing to solicit discussions from the students. This does not mean to ask a question, pause, and then retrieve the answer from the one or two students always willing to provide an answer. Better techniques include Think, Pair, Share, problem-based learning (PBL), or even simple team exercises.

To further facilitate community among the students, online communication should also be accomplished. I like to provide a FORUM for the students, but I have found that the FORUM goes unused unless the students are required to use it for a defined goal for several consecutive weeks and rewarded for usage beyond that. I also like using regularly-scheduled Elluminate (now Blackboard Collaborate) for holding on-line office hours. During the first couple of weeks, I would briefly post an image of the student joining the session so that the others would also get to know them. This allows for students to find others in the class with similar challenges and others who may be able to offer help that goes beyond the people who may coincidentally sit near each other in lecture. Our laboratory provides a third avenue for students to build close relationships in the course. Each laboratory session hosts roughly one-fourth of the entire class and partnering within the lab sessions allows students to make personal bonds.Finally, I like to make use of WIKI pages for small group projects to be recorded in a journal-style. Other teams can visit these project pages to learn more about the interests of other students.