Building Community in Online High Enrollment Courses

The second Century Club session of the Fall 2026 semester turns its attention to developing an inclusive learning community. Elina Ibrayeva, Associate Professor of Practice in Management, will speak on building community in online high-enrollment courses through designing personalized activities and content.

In her session, Dr. Ibrayeva will address how faculty teaching large classes often have to rely on automated publisher created content such as McGrawHill smartbooks, mini simulations, and self-assessments in their teaching. Publisher created content provides advantages of standardization and uniformity, use of technology, scalability, and ease of measurement. Innovative teaching, however, may suggest that instructors should also develop their own assignments that make teaching creative, engaging, and personally relevant to students, even in large classes.

This session introduces three practices that make student learning more personalized and meaningful (journaling), creates faculty presence as well as a sense of belonging to the others in the class (small group zoom meetings) and to the school alumni (video interviews with alums).