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#HumanizeOL

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Are you experiencing a feeling of loss over not seeing your students in person this term? Are you concerned about how this lack of human connection might affect your vulnerable students? Take the pledge to complete the CVC-OEI/@ONE Humanizing Challenge!

What is Humanizing?

Humanized online teaching ensures the affective dimensions of learning are addressed through instructor-student relationships and community, allowing connection and empathy to drive engagement and rigor (Pacansky-Brock, Smedshammer, Vincent-Layton, 2020).  The Humanizing Challenge can be done over three days – or at your own pace – and is designed to equip faculty with knowledge of culturally responsive pedagogy and a toolkit of online teaching practices that will support students who are experiencing trauma as a result of racial injustice, stereotyping, and other forms of marginalization.

The Humanizing Challenge will provide faculty with an understanding of the theoretical frameworks that underpin humanizing, as well as specific strategies for initiating instructor-student relationships from the first click. This will be done by viewing the videos and completing the self-guided activities. 

The Humanizing Challenge is guided by the following questions:

1. How do instructor-student relationships serve as the connective tissue for engagement, community, and rigor for our minoritized students – face-to-face and online?
2. How might we create online courses that initiate positive instructor-student relationships from the first click?
3. How does our emotional armor create barriers to our ability to design and facilitate equitable learning experiences?

The Humanizing Challenge is designed to support you with achieving the following goals:

1. Analyze the emotional armor and cultural constructs that influence how you teach.
2. Recognize the influence of trauma on your teaching and your students’ learning.
3. Identify the connection between instructor-student relationships, engagement, and rigor.
4. Record, host, and caption a 2-3 minute, imperfect welcome video for your course.
5. Create a Liquid Syllabus with Google Sites to initiate positive instructor-student relationships at a distance.
6. Be prepared to further develop relationships with your students and leverage those connections to ensure they reach their full intellectual potential.

Who should take the Challenge?

Faculty who are preparing to teach online and those who support faculty. To be successful, participants should possess the ability to navigate between multiple browser tabs or windows, download and upload files, record video with either a smartphone or webcam, and troubleshoot issues independently.

The Humanizing Challenge is comprised of recorded Zoom sessions and self-guided asynchronous activities. It is free and while it is designed for the California college faculty and staff, it is open to the general public.

What is required?

To complete the self-guided activities, participants will need a free Google account and either a smartphone, a webcam, or a free Adobe Spark account.

Ready to Begin?

Each section of the Humanizing Challenge is “stand alone” and you may complete any or all three.

Have a question?

If you have any questions about the Humanizing Challenge, please send an email to support@cvc.edu. It will be forwarded to a friendly human who will be happy to help you. 🙂 Or leave a comment below.