Paralegal Professor, Rick Libman began allotting marks to his class based on one of his student's ideas of a participation challenge - checking in on fellow classmates, staff members or colleagues each day to see how they were fairing.
The challenge motivated his students to participate regularly while also engaging those who were not as active before to become increasingly involved in building an online community. It has helped everyone stay connected socially, emotionally and academically.
Professor Libman encouraged his class to reach out to others beyond their social scope and hopes that this will also inspire his colleagues to consider introducing their own participation challenge. He is confident that his students will continue this long after the course has ended and owes the overwhelming success of this challenge to his student Leslie Jansson for proposing the idea.