Increasing Student Feelings of Belonging through Classroom Activities
Classroom activities designed to facilitate interpersonal closeness, feelings of belonging, interdependence, and perceptions of similarity may improve students’ feelings of belonging and class attendance.
Presented by:
Madeleine A. Fugere, Eastern Connecticut State University
Abstract:
Student engagement and feelings of belonging may improve following classroom activities designed to promote interpersonal closeness, community-building, interdependence, and similarity. We compared student feelings of belonging as well as objective quiz and exam grades and class attendance in two sections of a Social Psychology course: a control section and a section which completed the activities described above. Students in the activity section showed significant improvements in feelings of belonging over the semester as well as significantly increased class attendance and nonsignificantly higher grades (versus the control condition). Implementing similar activities across disciplines may improve student perceptions of the classroom community.
Keywords:
Belonging, Classroom Community, Interactive Classroom Activities
Learning Outcomes:
1. Individuals will learn four strategies to increase student feelings of belonging.
2. These strategies and activities can be applied to courses across disciplines.
3. Individuals can plan to introduce these activities in their own courses to increase student participation and enjoyment of courses.
Increasing Student Feelings of Belonging through Classroom Activities
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Transcript:
We randomly assigned one section of a social psychology class to complete four activities while the other section served as a control section. The four activities were designed to promote interpersonal closeness, feelings of belonging, perceptions of similarity with the instructor and with other classmates, and interdependence. We hypothesized that over time, students in the activity section would show stronger feelings of belonging, more frequent class attendance, and higher exam scores versus the control section. 75/80 students chose to participate in at least one data collection session. 44 students completed all 6 measures at baseline, after each activity, and at the end of the semester. These measures consisted of the College Belongingness Questionnaire (Arslan, 2021) and the Student Belongingness Scale (Sotardi et al., 2021). Although we predicted that feelings of belonging would increase more for students in the activity versus the control section, no interactions were statistically significant except for section by grades over time. Students in the activity section had higher grades than the control section on the final quiz and the final exam. When limiting analyses to the activity section, students showed significant improvements in feelings of belonging on both measures. Students in the activity section also attended significantly more classes, made slightly more favorable comments on their teaching evaluations, and made more favorable comments about the activities versus students in the control section.
References
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