Building Cohesive Classroom Communities

Research shows that a cohesive classroom community, or the relationships built between students within a classroom setting, leads to a long list of positive student outcomes in higher education. This research seeks to better understand how to build cohesion in a classroom community, a goal that has become even more urgent given the student isolation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. It uses the tool of social network analysis, a tool particularly well suited for studying networks of relationships, to examine how two common collaborative learning techniques—small group discussions and team-based projects—affect the structure and strength of the classroom community networks in two public affairs undergraduate courses. The results show that both collaborative learning techniques created a network of denser, more inclusive relationships between students. Teamwork, in particular, had a large impact on the formation of relationships between students. Further, the collaborative teaching strategies were effective in improving student learning outcomes. Students received higher grades and reported higher satisfaction with the course if they were more embedded in the classroom community network. The results of this research reveal the importance of focusing on relationship-building instructional techniques for student success in higher education.