Course Essentials

What is this course about?

We're so glad you're here! If you've been looking for the secret sauce for building community, fostering meaningful student-student interactions, and supporting the needs of underserved student groups, you've found it. Research shows that online students are more invested in a class when they have an instructor who cares about their learning success, and this relationship is even more important for underserved students. But conveying your human presence, empathy, and awareness in an online class requires intention and a toolkit of effective practices. In this class, you will be immersed in a supportive online learning community as you develop humanized practices for your online course that will lay an inclusive foundation for community building and collaboration.

Nuts n bolts

Fulfills: This course is part of the Certificate in Online Teaching. It can be taken as a stand alone course, or as part of the certificate.
Optional Continuing Ed Credit: Participants in this course can seek optional professional development/continuing education credits by dual-enrolling in TEC 1850 at Fresno Pacific University. A separate fee due to FPU will apply.
Duration: 4 weeks
Time Commitment: Approximately 10 hours per week, for a total of 40 hours
Level of Difficulty: Intermediate. This course requires creating video content, but the course is designed for those who may be new to video and social presence.

Objectives

This course is designed to support you to:

Gain an understanding of the value of instructor-student learning partnerships, particularly when teaching diverse groups of students.
Explore key research findings that correlate social presence with increased engagement, satisfaction, and learning.
Consider the value of digital storytelling as a culturally responsive teaching practice.
Consider examples of humanizing strategies used by online community college instructors.
Experiment with digital tools that hold potential to humanize your online class.
Learn to create, caption, and embed your own videos in Canvas.

Outcomes

To successfully complete this course, you will:

Discuss research findings that link a caring instructor to online student success.
Discuss research that links social presence with increased student interactions.
Record, share, and caption video of yourself with effective lighting and audio.
Create a video for your online class that conveys your instructor and social presence.
Develop a visually-oriented webpage with an embedded, captioned video for your online class.

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