Challenge: Set clear expectations for teacher involvement

Why:

• No matter how nice nice they are, teachers are considered an authority for the students.
• Having a teacher in the community often reduces student collaboration
• By responding too quickly too often, we train the students to get their answers from you instead of each other

An interesting observation is that teacher-driven communities get less activity than student-driven ones. That's why students are good Learning Community Managers.

The teacher's role

To identify the teachers role, simply start by asking three basic questions.

See the flow-chart to the right.

0. Do nothing

• No Differ account needed

Teachers are often very busy, and sometimes prefer that the learning community manager to do what they think is best without being involved themselves. And that's ok. It allows you to scale student-driven communities at your university without being blocked by busy teachers. These are student-driven communities after all!

For teachers who

• Don't have time to be involved

1. Only receive status updates