Learning Together: Experimental Evidence on Promoting Connections in Remote Classes

How can instructors best foster connections among students when learning is fully remote? This article describes a pedagogical experiment conducted in two large introductory political science courses at a large public university in the 2020–2021 academic year. We randomly assigned groups of students to different sets of instructions on how to study together remotely for an exam. Our strongest finding is that almost any effort by an instructor prompting students to work together helps students to feel more connected to one another;however, students often need to see and hear one another to feel connected. We find this to be tremendously encouraging—relatively easy interventions can result in significant improvements in learning.