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Community college students are more likely to come from underserved populations and are inclined to feelings of self-doubt in academic settings. When learning online, our students need to know they have an instructor who cares and is there to support them, and that they are part of a vibrant learning community. Effective online teachers mindfully cultivate their presence at the course level and one-on-one with students. These interactions foster a relationship based on trust, which is the foundation of a learning community.
Reflections
Reflections
Where I was.
Where I was.
At the start of the Humanizing Online Teaching and Learning class, I made use of very few digital resources for my online courses. While I felt that the overall setup of my course was great, I knew that I hadn't humanized it well enough. For example, I had my bitmoji in various places in the course, but now I see that while that can be fun initially, it can’t create motivation or care throughout a semester. I knew that I needed to add different digital, humanizing elements to my course.
Where I am.
Where I am.
After taking this course, I’ve learned so much about some great, free tools. I have learned how to use Adobe Spark (and am grateful for the opportunity to explore both pages and video production), Powtoon, embed images or let student make use of images, give learning nudges, and use video/voice feedback for student papers.
Instructor presence is a topic that I am so glad I learned more about. Because I teach online and plan to continue teaching online, I know I need to learn how to be very present and welcoming for my students. I completely reworked my Fall 2019 online English course and developed a lot of new material, but after taking this @ONE class, I realize that I haven’t actually made space to show my instructor presence in my online classes.
Social presence goes hand in hand with instructor presence, and I find a real need for it in my online classes. One of the biggest challenges in my online class is student retention. While I have developed many discussion forums for students to explore their ideas and to share with others, I realize that this tool is the only social presence my students have in the class; if I add more humanizing elements, perhaps this can make a big difference. This semester, I've starteed include weekly, personal videos of myself that give short messages of encouragement, points of clarification, or simple comments that use particular tone to show my meaning rather than relying on text and possible misunderstandings.
Where I'm headed.
Where I'm headed.
I would like to do more to add a human dimension to my courses. To help students feel a part of an active community, I plan to make use of Flipgrid and I will ask students to record short videos of themselves (or their work since I cannot legally require students to record themselves) to be shared with each other. This really humanizes their presence in the classroom and makes learning more interactive.
Some other ideas that I plan to incorporate in future courses are to make use of voice narrated videos (like the one below that I completed using Powtoon), and to make use of screen recordings to walk students through some tutorials or hard to find details on Canvas, like feedback on assignments.
Examples
Examples
Online Student Voices Project: Created with Adobe Spark Video
Using this new (to me) software, I first conducted in interview with a former college student about their experience taking an online course. Then, I created a video to go along with my narration. With this project, I learned how to create my video using new software and to caption it with YouTube.
Completing this project helped me to see that multimodeal assignments are key to keeping students focused (especially Generaztion Z students). For example, for my current and future classes, I will make use of Padlet for surveys. See below.
Changes in My Course: Example Padlet Survey
To create more multimodal assignments, I will use something like the Padlet survey to the left. For this survey, I ask students about the clearest and muddiest concepts in the class so far. While this format is similar in question to a survey I might distrubute as a Canvas quiz, the colors, interactions, and dashboard make it more interesting to look at and interact with.
Video Showcase Assignment: Created using Powtoon
The final project for this course was to create a video that I could place on my online course home page--a welcome for students and a preview of the course. This is the first contact students have with the course, so adding my voice helped humanize an otherwise general video. I created this video with Powtoon, and this was my first time using the software.
The video to the left now sits proudly on my newly edited online Expository Composition course home page.
To the right, you can view a graphic that illustrates what a humanized course looks like.
The Humanizing Your Online Class infographic, by Michelle Pacansky-Brock and Teaching & Learning Innovations at CSU Channel Islands, is shared with a CC-BY-NC license.
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