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This paper reflects on how a ‘sense of belonging’ is cultivated for both the teaching team and the students in a large, core first year Business unit. In the Innovative Business Practice (IBP) unit students develop their personal brand and professional identity through strength-based science, and also pitch creative solutions to social problems. This cross-disciplinary unit is taught using an activity-based approach. The team of tutors are being trained as facilitators which creates a sense of belonging and community within the teaching team. A blended delivery approach utilising Crowdicity, idea management software, facilitates networked learning, and helps students develop their digital skills as well as interact with one another, the teaching team and industry experts. *This practice report was presented as an Emerging Initiative at the STARS Conference in Melbourne, Australia in July 2019 and was selected for publication in this special issue. The authors have kindly given their permission to have this report published and it has undergone a further review by the editors to confirm it aligns with the Journal’s submission guidelines and standards. Please cite this article as: Levin, E., Rixon, A., & Keating, M. (2019). How can a 'Sense of Belonging' inform your teaching strategy? Reflections from a core Business unit. A Practice Report. Student Success, 10(2). 71-78. doi:10.5204/ssj.v10i2.1307. This practice report has been accepted for publication in Student Success. Please see the Editorial Policies under the ‘About’ section of the Journal website for further information. Student Success: A journal exploring the experiences of students in tertiary education This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence. As an open access journal, articles are free to use, with proper attribution. ISSN: 2205-0795 How can a 'Sense of Belonging' inform your teaching strategy? ... A Practice Report 72 | Student Success, 10(2) August 2019 Background Designing and delivering an innovative unit in a large degree is complex and challenging. At times it is easiest just to go with the flow and deliver a standard unit, rather than challenging norms and conventions. This paper relates part of the journey of the development of a large core first-year unit through which the teaching team has leveraged a ‘sense of belonging’ approach in its teaching philosophy. This paper considers the ‘sense of belonging’ from dual perspectives; that of the student, and that of the members of the teaching team. As far back as 1943, Maslow identified ‘belonging’ as a basic human need which has been argued to be even more fundamental with the ‘belonging hypothesis’ (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Building from Tinto (1997) who showed that a sense of belonging impacts student retention, a large volume of research has developed over the last 25 years. The teaching team have adopted Strayhorn’s (2012) definition of a sense of belonging as “a basic human need and motivation, sufficient to influence behaviour” (p. 17). Despite the large literature base developing around a sense of belonging, with research demonstrating important interventions such as acknowledging ‘belonging uncertainty’ (Harackiewicz & Priniski, 2018) and even policy calls for a sense of belonging to be considered a mindset for students to be developed (Rattan, Savani, Chugh, & Dweck,2015), little has been written about how it can be used as a teaching philosophy in itself. A critical role of higher education is the development of transferable and non-discipline specific skills (i.e. generic/soft/employability skills) applicable in personal and professional contexts, so graduates are prepared for the VUCA World1 (which is Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous). In order to be able to succeed and grow through higher education 1 VUCA is a concept that originated in the U.S. Army to describe the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of the multilateral global landscape after the end of the Cold War (Kinsinger & Walch, 2012). students need to have the opportunity meet and interact with peers, as well as teaching staff, and feel they are part of the learning community, as learning is a social activity. Student sense of belonging to class communities is agreed to be an important predicator of student academic success and indeed is important in first-year units (Kift, Nelson, & Clarke, 2010). With these goals in mind, the intention was to design a core unit within the Bachelor of Business at Swinburne University of Technology which affords students the opportunity to settle into university; engage with other students in the learning process; develop an understanding of the higher education learning environment; begin to identify their personal identity and brand; develop a sense of belonging, whilst strengthening soft/employability skills. Through this experience, students develop a personal plan in preparation for life beyond the university. The unit panel for Innovative Business Practice (IBP) set out to develop a unit which epitomises the intentions mentioned above, to effectively equip students with skills and capabilities that will set them up to succeed in their studies and beyond. The aim was to develop social, as well as academic systems, to facilitate learning and encourage engagement so that students could become part of a learning community whilst developing collaborative learning strategies through active learning which has been shown to influence learning, persistence and belonging (Braxton, Milem, & Shaw, 2000; Chanda-Gool & Mamas, 2017). The unit – Innovative Business