1. HUMANIZE

I have been teaching online classes since 2007 years through a variety of learning management systems, including Blackboard, Moodle, and currently, Canvas. I pride myself on being very responsive to student emails, participating in the discussion boards, and providing prompt feedback. I created hours and hours of video lectures when I was 8+ months pregnant with my firstborn in 2010. It wasn't until years later that I realized none of my videos were accessbile since they do not have any captions. I took all of the videos out of my course in 2014.

The Humanizing Online Teaching @One course was an eye-opener for me. I enjoyed learning about the statisitics of online students and the research about the importance of an engaged and caring instructor to improve student success. I already had a course specific navigation video, but it only included voice. After taking the Humanzing course, I made a "welcome to office hours" video with the help of a colleague. I regulary participate in the weekly discussions and post announcements three times a week. I feel very comfortable with the instructor presence portion of humanizing. Social presence is what I plan to incorporate in the future.

I loved the concept of Social Presence in the Humanizing course. Social presence adds the human dimension to online learning. Social presence makes all learning meaningful and is more likely to intrinsically motivate a student to succeed. In order to increase my social presence, I have started using the video feedback tool in the Canvas Speedgrader. It is a quick and easy was to give highly personalized feedback to students. I plan to continue using this tool on more assignments, especially exams to give kudos to students who score well. I also plan to start making Adobe Spark videos to introduce modules. I also love the idea of having students create videos.