Description of the Activity

1. Prep: Assign students to groups of 3-4 students.
2. Each group should have two whiteboards. Ask students to introduce themselves and write names and pronouns on one of the boards.

3. Prompt: In order to really learn physics well, it is important to share your physics ideas and practice using them in front of the instructional team and your classmates.
   

   What can the members of this class do to help you feel comfortable sharing your ideas in your small groups and with the whole class? (“Be respectful” is a lovely answer but it's different for different people. What does being respectful look like to you?)

   Use one whiteboard to list ways that your classmates can support your learning. Use the other whiteboard to list ways that the teaching team can support your learning.

4. Presentations:“Things students can do” (the first whiteboard) Have each group talk present their list. Groups should first introduce themselve to the group (names and pronouns). I suggest that groups acknowledge things that have been discussed before, i.e., “we agree (or disagree) that we should listen and try to understand other students' ideas”, and add new things “we also suggest that we should learn and use the names of other students in our groups”. It is important to see what things have consensus and discuss some of the nuances of the suggestions. The instructional team could share their own pre-made board at the end.
5. Discussion:”Things the instructional team can do (the second whiteboard) I suggest having a whole class brainstorming list on the class whiteboard. It's nice when the students can see the instructor agree to something the students want (shows responsiveness). It's also nice for the instructor to explain their reasoning about not making certain changes (e.g., “I can't post homework more than a week ahead because the pace of the class and the order of the topics can change based on how the activities in class go” or “I prefer not to make the homework due at midnight because my experience is that most students work right up to the deadline and lack of sleep is bad for physical and mental health.”).

Student Conversations

1. The first time I ran this activity, most groups said some variant of “be respectful”. Press groups to describe specifically what being respectful looks like.
2. You can make the activity shorter by asking groups to only report on things that have not already been mentioned. This is good because they have to listen to the other groups, but I like the opportunity for students to say they agree with each other.

Example Lists: