Embedded Files
How To Humanize
Humanizing doesn't just magically happen in our online classes. It must be intentionally designed into the interactions, assessments, and content in our course before class even starts. And there isn't one simple formula for doing that. The good news is that technology now makes it easier to use images, voice, and video in our online teaching. But humanizing doesn't have to be high-tech. Here are some ways that SDCCD faculty members are already humanizing online courses:
· A personal email to students before class starts to encourage students, share resources, and tell them that they can be successful.
· An intro video that conveys the instructor as a real person who cares about their success.
· A "Getting Started" survey to find out about life events and learning preferences of students, info that is perhaps too personal for the icebreaker discussion forum.
· Use of students' first names in comments, messages, and emails
Later on in this course, we'll dig deeper into humanized interactions, assessments, and content online. We hope you see humanized course design as an opportunity to bring your unique strengths and creativity to your course. And by encouraging students to do the same, we'll foster a rich and meaningful learning community that keeps students engaged and motivated.
Looking For More?
Some of you will be ready to move on, and others will want to spend some time digging deeper into resources to Humanize. Choose your own adventure! Here are additional resources, if you're interested:
· The full archive of the Student Panel on CCC Digital Learning Day (Links to an external site.) (47:50) is an optional resource available online and includes other online students experiences and stories.
· Infographic - How to Humanize Your Online Course (Links to an external site.)
· Browse the @ONE Online Course Catalog for their new Humanizing Course! (Links to an external site.)
The barriers to student success online include (Funk, 2005):
- limited math proficiency;
- difficulty with college-level reading;
- difficulty with college-level writing;
- other obligations drawing on their time;
- lack of resources for technology or critical supplies.
- difficulty due to physical, cognitive, emotional differences.
Moreover, the reality is that some students attend a community college because they simply have not yet gained the maturity to be self-directed learners, and are thus not yet 'ready' for a four-year college.
Success Rates Online
According to a 2014 report conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) students are about 11-14 percentage points less likely to complete an online course successfully than a traditional course, even when difference in student characteristics and other factors are taken into account. The results are far worse for ethnic and racial minorities. (Johnson & Cuellar Mejia, 2014)Why is it that in some courses students tend to excel? Another PPIC report (Johnson, Cuellar Mejia, & Cook, 2015) reviewed literature and interviews with online faculty and DE coordinators, to come up with the four factors that contribute to a successful online course:
- Course Design
- Faculty Support and Development
- Student Orientation and Expectations
- Regular and Effective Interaction
The 2015 PPIC report defines a successful online course as "at least 70 percent of its students earn a passing grade, and if student performance is at least as good as in traditional version of the same courses. Another key element in our definition of course success is whether students in an online course continue to do well in subsequent courses (either online or traditional) in the same subject." (p. 3).
Leveraging Online For Social Justice And Equity
Online education could create even more road blocks for students with learning differences and limited resources. But well-designed online courses have the potential for overcoming many of these very same barriers while providing more access to adult learners with families and fulltime jobs. As we design our online courses, keeping these differences in mind can help us ensure we're breaking through barriers, not building them higher.
In our face-to-face courses, we have to simultaneously deliver the content while also paying attention to student needs. We're teaching the content to all the students at the same moment in time. In our traditional classrooms, we do an enormous amount of multi-tasking and thinking on our feet in order to design learning experiences. As faculty who have been teaching online already, you all know how much online course preparation happens before our students even enter the online classroom. Before the class starts online instructors must anticipate the needs of their students, curate student support resources, design formative assessments, decide on how to get students interacting with each other. This is a huge upfront time investment, but the intentional design of interaction, assessment, and content is what fosters the inclusive online learning environments for all our students! Once our online course starts, we can devote our attention to connecting to our individual students, finding out what they need to be successful, and supporting them through their learning journey.
Want To Dig Deeper?
- "Designing Your Culturally Responsive Canvas Course: Ten Tips (Links to an external site.)" by Allison Green, Bevin Taylor, Marc Lentini, Highline College (Links to an external site.) is licensed under CC BY 4.0 (Links to an external site.).
- Culturally Responsive Canvas Courses (Links to an external site.) a presentation by Mark Lentini archived from InstructureCon16.
References:
Funk, J. (2005). At-risk online learners, reducing barriers to success. eLearn, [online] 2005(8). Available at: http://elearnmag.acm.org/featured.cfm?aid=1082221 (Links to an external site.).Johnson, H., Cuellar Mejia, M. and Cook, K. (2015). Successful Online Courses in California's Community Colleges. [online] Public Policy Institute of California. Available at: http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_615HJR.pdf (Links to an external site.) [Accessed 30 Nov. 2017].Johnson, H. and Cuellar Mejia, M. (2014). Online Learning and Student Outcomes in California's Community Colleges. [online] Public Policy Institute of California. Available at: http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/rb/RB_514HJRB.pdf (Links to an external site.) [Accessed 30 Nov. 2017].
Social Presence In The Online Classroom
The interactions that you have with your online students influence their engagement in the course, their motivation to stick with it, and their successful achievement of the learning outcomes. Initiating these interactions with students is not only one of the Distance Education Guidelines that we covered in Module 2, but it's just good teaching.
Social Presence refers to the presentation of oneself as a 'real person' in online interactions, and is essential for creating an online learning community in distance education courses. Studies have shown that social presence is a significant predictor of course retention in online courses (Gomez, Lin, & Yen, 2009).
How do we achieve social presence online? We regularly interact with our students and we give students opportunities for interacting with each other, just as they would expect in an oncampus course. Especially in courses such as math and computer science or courses that use publishers' websites to deliver content, check homework automatically and give exams, students need to have interaction with an instructor as well as with their classmates. With today's Web tools, there are several ways for class members to get to know each other and initiate conversations, enabling a level of interactivity that was never possible with the limited technologies in the past. Posting a photo of yourself, using a video introduction, giving audio feedback - these are all examples of ways to make ourselves more present to our students in our online classes.
As you work your way through this module and through the rest of the training course, think of ways that you make yourself socially present in your own online class. Do you create a classroom environment that enables students to interact with you and learn from each other? Check out the "Human Presence Teaching Tips" from Santa Barbara City College for some more ways to establish social presence in your teaching:
Additional Articles On Presence:
- How to Keep the Human Element in Online Teaching (Links to an external site.)
- Behaviors and Strategies for Improving Online Instructor Presence (Links to an external site.)
- Even in Virtual Classrooms, Teachers Build Bonds that Help Students Learn (Links to an external site.)
- Humanizing Online Learning (Links to an external site.)
Social Presence In The Online Classroom
The interactions that you have with your online students influence their engagement in the course, their motivation to stick with it, and their successful achievement of the learning outcomes. Initiating these interactions with students is not only one of the Distance Education Guidelines that we covered in Module 2, but it's just good teaching.
Social Presence refers to the presentation of oneself as a 'real person' in online interactions, and is essential for creating an online learning community in distance education courses. Studies have shown that social presence is a significant predictor of course retention in online courses (Gomez, Lin, & Yen, 2009).
How do we achieve social presence online? We regularly interact with our students and we give students opportunities for interacting with each other, just as they would expect in an oncampus course. Especially in courses such as math and computer science or courses that use publishers' websites to deliver content, check homework automatically and give exams, students need to have interaction with an instructor as well as with their classmates. With today's Web tools, there are several ways for class members to get to know each other and initiate conversations, enabling a level of interactivity that was never possible with the limited technologies in the past. Posting a photo of yourself, using a video introduction, giving audio feedback - these are all examples of ways to make ourselves more present to our students in our online classes.
As you work your way through this module and through the rest of the training course, think of ways that you make yourself socially present in your own online class. Do you create a classroom environment that enables students to interact with you and learn from each other? Check out the "Human Presence Teaching Tips" from Santa Barbara City College for some more ways to establish social presence in your teaching:
Asynchronous Versus Synchronous Interaction
Throughout this training and as you continue to gain experience teaching online you will often hear the terms asynchronous and synchronous tools and learning experiences.
- Synchronous communication occurs when all participants are logged into the system simultaneously and using the tools at the same moment in time. Chat rooms and conference calls are examples of synchronous communication tools where members communicate in real time with one another.
- Asynchronous communication does not require participants to be online together at the same time. With discussion boards, for example, one student might post a question in the morning, and they receive the answer from their classmate in the afternoon. Participants are communicating, but the interaction occurs over a period of time.
Both kinds of communication tools have their place in the online classroom, and you should begin to decide how you'll incorporate both asynchronous and synchronous communication in your own online class. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you consider how these communication tools will work in your online course:
- Logistics: If you are planning on a weekly online meeting (synchronous) with your class, then you will want to find times that work with their schedules. This can be difficult to do for your online students who may work full-time, have family responsibilities, and may be logging in from different time zones. If some students are unable to attend, then you'll want to provide them with a recorded archive of what they missed.
- The objectives of the activity: Is there a particular assignment or activity in your course that requires immediate feedback? Which activities in your course are inherently synchronous in nature? Is it possible to create an asynchronous version that achieves the same learning objectives?
- Different participation: In asynchronous communication, when students have time to reflect upon the topic and formulate their own opinion, you may find the quality of the student input improves. They aren't expected to think on-the-spot in front of a class full of their peers. Then again, maybe in the online environment they feel anonymous, and this changes what gets shared and how it gets shared in your class.
- Kinds of interaction: First decide which kinds of interaction - reflection, conversation, critique, debate, etc. - will allow students to meet the objectives. Then decide which tool could be used for that kind of interaction. If you don't know of a Canvas tool that will meet your needs, then let us know - we'll help you explore other options.
How Often?
So is this teaching online deal a 24/7 gig? Well, it certainly could be if you were turning emails around as quickly as they came in. But your interaction with students in the online setting really depends on how you set it up to work for you and your class. You will need to follow the Distance Education Guidelines that we covered in Module 2. But every instructor is going to handle this differently, and it's important that you let your students know how and how often you will be communicating with them in your course.
Set Expectations - Contact
Individual Contact
Students need to know when to expect to hear back from you if they contact you individually with a question and/or concern about the course. Let students know in your syllabus that they will get a response from you within 24-48 hours - or whatever timeframe you feel will work best for you and your students. If you don't plan on returning emails over the weekend, tell them that in the syllabus. If you know that you'll be logging in only during evening hours, let your students know this.
Contact with the Class as a Whole
Not only will you be communicating with students on an individual basis, but you'll also be sending out communication to the class as a whole. Find a structure that works for you and your class and stick to it. Some instructors send out a weekly email announcement that serves to introduce the new week's material and wrap-up and review the material from the previous week. This is a nice way of keeping a sense of community in the class, as each individual member gets introduced to the material together with their classmates. In addition to a weekly email announcement to the entire class, you might send out announcements to them throughout the week to remind them of due dates and share with the class any repeated questions that you've been getting from them individually. You'll find there are lots of reasons to send out announcements to the class during the week - updating due dates, changing assignment instructions, adding new resources, reminders, etc.
Stick With It!
Once you've set the expectations and established a routine for your communication with your students, stick with it! If students have gotten weekly email announcements from you on Sunday nights, and they still haven't received a current week's announcement by Tuesday night, then they may begin to wonder if they've missed it, or if they were excluded from the information. When you stick to a routine in the course, students will be enabled to do the same - a great way to motivate your students to actively participate in their learning!
Synchronous Tools
As part of this training course we do not have any required synchronous activities. However if you would like to learn more about any of the tools below for use in your own online course, please contact one of the course instructors, and we'll be happy to show you the options that are available to you.
Zoom.us
Zoom.us (Links to an external site.) is a video conferencing tool that allows for audio and video collaboration amongst participants. It's a great way to meet face-to-face while online! Zoom allows users to see and speak to each other. Instructors can share their screen with participants, allowing class members to collaborate and interact via voice, webcam, and chat.
Zoom can be used to hold office hours, conduct lectures, moderate student discussions, hold student presentations, host problem-solving sessions, exam reviews, and the list goes on and on. Zoom does not require client-side Java, and so the process of joining a Zoom session is much easier for students.
ConferNow:
One way of getting a Zoom account is going through ConferNow (CCCConfer) which is a Zoom solution available to all CCC faculty members. To get a free account on ConferNow's Zoom offering please visit ConferNow (Links to an external site.).
Free Basic Account:
You can create your own account for free at Zoom.us (Links to an external site.). The free account will allow you to hold your own sessions of up to 40 minutes in length for up to 25 participants. For many of the synchronous types of meeting that faculty are having with students, this will suffice.
A Note On Captioning
There is a caveat, however, for any class meeting that might include hearing-impaired students who need captioning. Currently, there is no captioner support built into Zoom. Thus to accommodate a hearing impaired student who joins live, instructors would need to have an ASL interpreter or arrange for a live transcription with DECT. Zoom sessions can be recorded and published to YouTube where they can be captioned, making the recorded archives accessible to hearing-impaired students.
Netiquette Guidelines
You will want to remind students that in all of their online class communication they need to follow the Netiquette Guidelines. It is recommended that you refer to the Netiquette Guidelines in your course syllabus, and that you add a link to the Netiquette Guidelines on all of the course forums, so students are reminded of the importance of contributing to a professional courteous learning environment.
The link to the Netiquette Guidelines can be found on our student training page link (http://www.sdccdonline.net/students/resources/NetiquetteGuidelines.pdf (Links to an external site.)) which you can add directly to your Canvas course or syllabus.
Students need to know that you're serious about netiquette, so no matter which activities you're using in your course, be sure that they know that they're expected to follow the Netiquette Guidelines.
Try This Tip!
Add a link to the Netiquette Guidelines to your course menu so that the guidelines are just one click away from any page of the course.
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