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Google Sites is easy to get started with even if you have limited tech skills and no prior experience with website design. You just work within provided template blocks to place text or other items on a page. (Here are a few, very short overview videos to help you see what you'll be doing)

In the training modules you'll have plenty of how-to information and resources to ensure your success! You may develop just a "first draft" of your liquid syllabus by the end of the training and that's ok!

Yes 😊 That said, you are not required to post a video publicly to earn your certificate and flex credit. This part of the training may push you outside of your comfort zone if you have never recorded a humanizing video for students before, but you have safety in this training to be imperfect and to simply try it out. 

Hear some additional warm encouragement from Michelle Pacansky-Brock in her "Day 2 Humanizing Challenge: Creating a Welcome Video" introduction.

No! You will be part of a Canvas Course with other faculty from Yuba College. You'll be encouraged to interact with others in the course. You will also have a course facilitator (🙌 me!) who answers questions, provides feedback, etc. The self-paced structure allows you to work on your own timeline but certainly not in isolation. Finish anytime ahead of when the course closes, and I hope if you're an early finisher you will stay engaged with the training shell to see what your colleagues share out.

Using a Liquid Syllabus is one strategy in a collection of Humanizing Online Learning Strategies. In the humanizing framework, Weeks 0-1 are considered the "high opportunity zone" of an online course. The explicit goal is to counteract belongingness uncertainty and stereotype threat that students from non-majority groups are more likely to experience.

Specifically:

1. Providing students information about you - your experience, how you got here, why you are like them, your passion for teaching and the subject - is motivating.

2. Giving students an idea of what is ahead through an easily-accessed, engaging format is motivating and begins to build trust.

3. Highlighting campus resources and services, such as childcare, mental health, transportation, food pantry, etc. supports students in feeling like they do belong and are supported by a larger community.