Fostering Human Connection
Webinars
Introduction to Humanizing Online Learning
This 1-hour presentation by Michelle Pacansky-Brock examines why humanized online learning is critical to closing equity gaps in the California Community College system. Michelle discusses how faculty can cultivate presence, empathy, and awareness to achieve humanized online facilitation.
Humanizing Pre-course Contact with a Liquid Syllabus
To navigate through these unknown and traumatic times, educators must be knowledgeable about how learning happens (and why it often does not). Recognizing the affective and cognitive dimensions of learning illuminates the need to understand our students as humans with rich, complicated stories and foster positive instructor-student relationships at a distance to ensure all students can achieve their full potential. This session will illuminate how humanized online teaching provides a foundation of trust you can build upon to foster positive instructor-student relationships and inspire engagement and rigor.
Anatomy of Learning: Leveraging Relationships to Inspire Engagement & Rigor
To navigate through these unknown and traumatic times, educators must be knowledgeable about how learning happens (and why it often does not). Recognizing the affective and cognitive dimensions of learning illuminates the need to understand our students as humans with rich, complicated stories and foster positive instructor-student relationships at a distance to ensure all students can achieve their full potential. This session will illuminate how humanized online teaching provides a foundation of trust you can build upon to foster positive instructor-student relationships and inspire engagement and rigor.
Sending Cues of Trust Online
What cues does your online course send to your students? Join Michelle Pacansky-Brock for a fireside chat with Maritez Apigo and Jennifer Ortiz about why cultivating trust in an online course is foundational to supporting our racially and culturally diverse students, especially in times of trauma. Do these cues cultivate psychological safety and trust for your racially minoritized and socially marginalized students? We will discuss strategies for building trust at a distance, as well as highlight deal-breakers that should be avoided.
Practicing Radical Love: Breaking Down Instructor-Student Hierarchies
To navigate through these unknown and traumatic times, educators must be knowledgeable about how learning happens (and why it often does not). Recognizing the affective and cognitive dimensions of learning illuminates the need to understand our students as humans with rich, complicated stories and foster positive instructor-student relationships at a distance to ensure all students can achieve their full potential. This session will illuminate how humanized online teaching provides a foundation of trust you can build upon to foster positive instructor-student relationships and inspire engagement and rigor.
Nudging Students with Your Human Presence
Fabiola Torres, Ethnic Studies Instructor at Glendale Community College, asks, "We all need a nudge sometimes, right?" Nudges are an important part of supporting the success of our online students. And when you use video to infuse your nudges with your human presence, students are more likely to trust you and less likely to drop your class. Fabiola will demonstrate why it’s important not be perfect, but to be human!
Taking Off Our Emotional Armor: Reflections from First-time Online Instructors
Dayamudra Dennehy, City College of San Francisco, and Gayathri Manikandan, Compton College, share reflections from their first time teaching online during the COVID-19 pivot of 2019.
Workshops
Humanizing Challenge
Engage in the self-paced version of our 3-day humanizing challenge!
Courses
Facilitated
Humanizing Online Teaching & Learning
This 4-week, facilitated online course will give you the secret sauce for building community and fostering meaningful student-student interactions. Research shows that online students are more invested in a class when they have an instructor who cares about their learning success and this relationship is even more important for underserved students. But conveying your human presence, empathy, and awareness in an online class requires intention and a toolkit of effective practices. In this class, you will be immersed in a supportive online learning community as you develop humanized practices for your online course that will lay an inclusive foundation for community building and collaboration.
Self-paced
Creating a Liquid Syllabus
A Liquid Syllabus, an element of Humanized Online Teaching, sends cues of trust and social inclusion to students before a course starts, which is key to achieving equity in online education. This course will guide you through the steps to create your
Creating a Welcome Video
This public Canvas course will walk you through how to record, host, caption, and share a brief, imperfect welcome video so you can create a trustworthy first impression with your online students!
Pocket PD
Microlectures
Humanizing My Online Teaching with Informal Videos
In the 6 1/2 minute video below, Wendy Bass discusses the value of using weekly, informal videos in her online teaching. The videos provide students with a brief preview of the new module and a sense of who their instructor really is, promoting her social presence.
Meaningful Discussions that Build Community Too
Do you wish your students would engage more meaningfully in your online discussions? If so, you might want to reconsider how you are designing your discussion prompts. In this 7-minute video, Stacey Smith from Coastline College, shows how she designs discussion prompts that elicit real life examples from her students. Stacey’s end-of-semester surveys show high student satisfaction levels with the discussions and a strong sense of community.
Humanizing Showcase with Tracy Schaelen
A 17-minute conversation with Michelle Pacansky-Brock and Tracy Schaelen about what humanizing is, why it's important, and how to do it. Tracy shares examples from her own online classes!
Humanizing Showcase with Mike Smedshammer
Sometimes the most unexpected tools can reap big rewards in your online class. This 15-minute video interview with Mike Smedshammer includes a glimpse of his Snapchat Zombie persona in Canvas.
Guides
Humanizing Guide
Humanized online teaching supports the affective and cognitive components of diverse students. It involves cultivating your human presence online, fostering instructor-student relationships anchored in trust, and leveraging those relationships to build the intellectual capacity of minoritized students.
Student-Student Interactions Guide
Learn why student-student interactions are key to high-quality online learning and get ideas for activities from your CCC faculty peers.
Free and Diverse Image Collection Guide
Including representations of people in your course materials who look like your students promotes a sense of belonging. Use this guide to find images that feature people from diverse groups.
Teaching with Google Maps Guide
Google Maps is a tool that can make your content come to life! Learn how to use it to make real-world connections and design and equitable online ice breaker.
Teaching with Twitter Guide
Twitter can be used to foster digital literacy among your students and as a formative assessment. This guide showcases effective practices and provides important tips about accessibility.
Articles
Canvas Speedgrader + Your Voice = A Win for Students
Don Carlisle shares tips for leaving voice feedback for your students in Canvas.
You Had Me at Hello
Brianna Kuhn shares reflections about how the CVC/@ONE Humanizing course influenced changes in her online teaching
Being Present for our Students
Kenley Neufeld explores the importance of mindfulness and presence in teaching.
YOU Matter - Online and Face-to-Face
Just because your course is online does not mean your presence is any less vital to your students’ success. This article includes a 17-minute video interview with Tracy Schaelen, who provides a tour of her humanized online course.
Pedagogy of Love: Teaching for Humanity
Fabiola Torres frames love as a core tenet of social justice pedagogy.
How Snapchat, Zombies, and Twitter Can Humanize Learning
Sometimes the most unexpected tools can reap big rewards in your online class. This article examines why instructor-student relationships are so important to students from marginalized and underrepresented groups. It also includes a 15-minute interview with Mike Smedshammer with a glimpse of his Snapchat Zombie presence in Canvas.
Managing Microagressions for More Inclusive Online Learning
Fabiola Torres reflects on the negative impact of microaggressions, unintended messages that trigger identity threat in students and impact their ability to achieve their full potential.
Student Info Form: Identify High Risk Students in Week 1
This helpful article provides an example of a student info form you can replicate for your own online course. The form collects micro data from students that will help you get to know them and enable you to adapt your teaching to their needs.
Wisdom Wall
A student-student interaction activity that will foster self-efficacy, metacognition, and growth mindset in students, as well as provide you with very useful perspectives about your course.
Community Ground Rules
Starting an online course with clear, supportive groundrules is an important part of an online course. This article provides a sample you can adapt for your own course.