Building Community: Religion 174

RELI 174: Becoming Christian in the Ancient World

Background: A core question for my course is how social groups form and how individuals signal or perform their belonging to a social group. In our case, we’re using evidence from ancient Christians to explore this question—and the survival of our evidence is itself interesting because it shows how effective some groups were controlling discussions about who could claim to be Christian and how.  

To help my students understand the range of social strategies used by ancient Christians and allow them to analyze how people negotiated those strategies, I am structuring our classroom exercises and assessments to mimic these strategies. I am still working out the details, but my plan is essentially to cast the course space as a game, where students will create their own “artifacts” of group formation and performance (e.g., martyr narratives, rubrics for ritual practices, anti-heretical attack ads, etc.), combined with some reflection exercises to encourage metacognition. Over the course of semester, the students will form groups that will eventually curate a final portfolio from among their individual productions throughout the semester. (In other words, a group of five students may have 15–20 individual pieces between them; they would select a representative sample of roughly 5–7 pieces as their group’s “surviving artifacts.”) Additionally, building working groups into the fabric of the course also facilitates in-class discussions when we want to explore primary sources and theoretical concepts. 

The purpose of this semester-long activity, then, is two-fold: (1) to build community into the fabric of the course, and (2) to give the students a hands-on way to think about the social processes we’re studying. 

I have structured an earlier version of the course in a somewhat similar way (students were assigned a historical character for a mock church council as a group final exercise), but in that instance students worked individually to research and develop their characters before assembling for group exercise. In this version, I want the students to work in small groups throughout the semester. This structure is different enough from the previous course run that it is somewhat experimental. In such cases, I think it’s helpful to be upfront with the students about the experimental nature and to give them some say in the rules of the “game,” as well as allow for modification if we decide something is not working. 

Plan for Community Building: Below is my rough plan for implantation. I welcome any and all feedback and ideas, since I’m still developing the details. 

Beginning of the Semester:

  1. Introductory videos:
    1. Me: How to pronounce my name, Background on myself, my research questions and how they align with the course, what I’m hoping to do with our “game,” a brief overview of how to navigate the Moodle site
    2. Students: Their name (and, if they’d like, their pronouns), where they are (on campus? At home? Where they identify as home), why signed up for the class, and what they hope to gain from it
  2. First in-class/hybrid discussion:
    1. Preliminary observations about how people signal group membership
      1. Do this first in small groups—ask each group to have a record keeper to record answers in discussion on Moodle
    2. Reiterate what we’re doing with the “game”
      1. Brainstorm rules (e.g., do I assign groups or will they form their own? Can they “defect” from one group to another?)
      2. What will help us facilitate the game? (e.g., regular Moodle-based discussion/chat sessions for analysis or logistics?)
      3. How can we ensure that everyone is involved?
    3. Following first class session, ask students to re-engage the preliminary discussion begun in our Moodle notes, this time applying and developing it in relation to the readings assigned for the next class session.
  1. Assign students to preliminary groups; provide online exercise to begin acquaintance with each other; give them some dedicated, loosely structured time with their group at the beginning of the first few class sessions to get to know each (provide some prompts associated with assigned readings) 

Throughout the Semester

  1. Bridging instructional modes
    1. For full-class discussion/lecture, task a student with helping me monitor Zoom for questions/comments from remote participants (this is a task that should be traded-off throughout the semester)
    2. Whenever possible, use small group discussion (ensure that each group is a mix of in-person and remote students). Focus class-sessions on analyzing texts, exploring artifacts/archaeological sites virtually
  2. Reinforcing Community
    1. Rely on the small groups for class discussions (both in person and online), accountability, end-of-week reflections
    2. Periodic strategizing sessions for the “game” (reviewing their individual assignments together, discussing what they found interesting/confusing about an assignment, analyze what the historical strategy can tell us about performances of belonging and what information we wish we had access to)