Building a learning community in first-year class

Abstract

Those of us who enjoy the interactive lecture technique as well as class activities that do not involve chalk and talk from the professor face a challenge when we enter that first class of the first year introductory history course. Apart from the serried ranks of unknown faces, there is usually a deathly silence. Efforts to create a learning community where even the instructor can be accepted as a well-informed participant seem to require new approaches with every class and still work better in some years than in others. In the ideal learning community, every student, and the professor, would feel at ease and accepted within the class environment.