Inclusive Teaching: Humanizing your Online Classes

Online classes offer students flexibility and convenience, but they can also lead to feelings of isolation if not designed with a crucial element in mind: a humanized learning experience.  Miranda Lopez argues that humanizing online learning is “the ability of the instructor to develop meaningful instructor-learner relationships which promote a community of interconnectedness and belonging.” To expand this definition, I argue that humanizing is recognizing the challenges of online teaching and learning, and focusing on the academic, emotional, and social aspects of online learning. Humanizing aims to create meaningful connections between teachers and students, among peers, and between students and course content. 

Humanizing the digital classroom means recognizing the individual behind each name on the roster and fostering a holistic approach to education. Rather than viewing engagement and achievement as fixed individual traits, the humanizing  approach recognizes them as social constructs influenced by the learning environment. Michelle Pacansky-Brock et al. (2020) emphasize that “When teaching online, each name on the screen must be recognized as a real human with a story.” (p. 5) They argue that faculty should design courses that value and celebrate students’ unique experiences, encouraging assignments that bring student personalities. 

Explaining the essence of humanizing online classroom, Pacansky-Brock (2020) identifies four principles: 

Trust: Trust in online teaching means students feel confident that their instructor cares about their success, creates a safe environment for taking intellectual risks, and respects their ideas and perspectives.  

Presence: Presence in online teaching is being responsive to engage participants in the learning community, so students feel more connected to the course and supported in their learning journey.

Awareness:  Awareness in online teaching is making an effort to understand students as individuals. By getting to know students’ backgrounds, strengths, challenges, and goals, instructors can provide more tailored and effective support.

Empathy: Building on awareness, empathy allows instructors to see situations from the students’ perspectives. This insight enables instructors to offer appropriate support and flexibility to enhance students’ learning experiences and outcomes.   

Embedding those principles in our teaching practice allows instructors to connect with students in a meaningful and deeper way and create less stressful learning experiences for students. In a recent CAT  blog post, Wake Forest professor Abbie Wright shared that certain pedagogical strategies contributed to mitigating stress in students’ learning. These strategies included policies that allow recovery opportunities after poor grades, clear instructions, feeling known by professors, flexible attendance policies and deadlines, office hours, feedback, interaction opportunities, frequent low stakes assignments, and collaborative work. Although the preliminary study concentrated on face-to-face classes, practices that are deemed to reduce stress speak to the four principles such as trust, presence, awareness, and empathy in humanizing online experiences. Many of these strategies could fit under multiple principles, as the four are interrelated. For example, flexible policies demonstrate both trust and empathy. The key is that collectively, these strategies help humanize the online classroom by fostering connection, understanding, and support between instructors and students.

Practical Strategies for Humanizing your Classroom

The following are some practical suggestions for humanizing your online classroom based on the four principles.   

To foster Trust:

• Utilize Transparent Grading Rubrics: Provide clear, detailed rubrics for all major assignments before students begin working on them. This transparency builds trust by ensuring students understand exactly how they’ll be evaluated and eliminates any perception of arbitrary grading. 
• Have a “Welcome Questions” Policy: Explicitly state and reinforce a classroom culture where all questions are welcomed and valued. This can be supported by creating a dedicated Q&A forum where students can ask questions anonymously if they prefer. Regularly acknowledging and praising good questions further reinforces this trusting environment.
• Create Regular Check-Ins and Feedback Loops: Implement weekly or bi-weekly anonymous surveys or polls (using tools like Google Forms or Poll Everywhere) to gauge student understanding, feelings about the course, and any concerns they may have. Sharing the results and responding to feedback fosters transparency and shows students that their voices are valued.

To foster Presence:

• Create introduction videos: Personalized videos from instructors can enhance the sense of presence in online learning environments. They help build rapport between students and teachers, making the learning experience feel more humanized and supportive.
• Use Virtual Icebreaker Activities: Use collaborative online tools or interactive platforms (e.g., Padlet, Kahoot) to facilitate icebreaker activities. Encourage students to share fun facts or personal interests in small groups, fostering a sense of community and trust among peers.
• Offer Live interaction options. This strategy contributes to cognitive presence by allowing learners to engage in meaningful discussions that promote critical thinking and deeper understanding of the material while providing opportunity to connect with other students.

To foster Awareness:

• Reflective Journals: Maintain a journal where you reflect on your teaching and students’ learning experiences and challenges throughout the course.
• Provide Multiple Content Formats: Provide course materials in various formats (text, audio, video) to cater to different learning styles and needs.
• Support Diverse Learners: Recognize diversity and individuality of students and support them in a variety of ways.

To foster Empathy:

• Flexible Deadlines: Allow for flexible submission dates to accommodate students’ varying circumstances and commitments.
• Flexible Office Hours: Offer office hours in various formats (text chat, video, phone) to accommodate different student preferences.
• Real-World Projects: Incorporate projects that allow students to apply their learning to real-world situations in their communities.

Online teaching with a human touch acknowledges that behind every digital interaction is a person with their own background, worldview, and learning style. By humanizing online classrooms, and utilizing the above-mentioned pedagogical strategies, we hope you can create more inclusive, engaging, and effective learning experiences for all students. 

Newly published TO@Wake Module 4 focuses on inclusive teaching strategies and provides resources for humanizing your online classroom, as well as for providing structure and implementing active teaching strategies. Self enroll in the course and check out the available resources.

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References: 

Cooper, L., Holbeck, R., & Mandernach, J. (2023, December). Nine tips for humanizing online learning. eLearn Magazine. https://elearnmag.acm.org/featured.cfm?aid=3596516 

Lopez. M, Humanizing online learning. https://www.utrgv.edu/cte/resources-new/online-teaching-resources/humanizing-online-learning/index.htm.  Accessed September 15, 2024

Pacansky-Brock, M. (2020). How to humanize your online class, version 2.0 [Infographic]. https://brocansky.com/humanizing/infographic2  

Pacansky-Brock, M., Smedshammer, M., & Vincent-Layton, K. (2020). Humanizing Online Teaching to Equitize Higher Education. Current Issues in Education, 21(2). https://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1905 Stewart, O. G. (2023). Stewart, O. G., (2024) “Understanding What Works in Humanizing Higher Education Online Courses”, Issues and Trends in Learning Technologies 11(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.2458/itlt.5566