Humanized Online Teaching Showcase

Where I Was - I have long been known as an interactive, caring, and fun professor in the face-to-face classroom, and what and why I do the things I do in the classroom are intentional. And despite knowing I needed to do things differently online, I wasn't sure of the next steps. I found some excellent strategies but was still floundering. Ironically and indeed sadly, my online classes were missing much of me.  

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Where I Am - This six-week training has opened doors, turned on lights, and gently pushed me in the right direction to bring me into the online space. I already had the technical skills and knew the pedagogical reasons for presence, but I didn't know how to implement them properly.  

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Where I Am Going - Where am I not going?  I have only just begun applying what I have learned and thinking through my online class offerings.  I will be reengineering all of my classes with the same life, vibrancy, bad jokes, and presence that exist in my in-person classes.   

The process of creating the liquid syllabus helped me focus on how to bring myself into the online space and how much information to provide at one time. I get passionate about my field and teaching. That passion in the online class can result in overcommunicating and inundating. Developing my first liquid syllabus has helped to serve as a guide to communicating what is most important right now in a precise way. 

The course card is where a student first enters your online course.  In the face-to-face classroom, I have music going, the door is open, there might be snacks, and there is always a welcome message for students as they enter.  Online students need much the same. 

To bring life into my course card for my Child Growth & Development course, I am using an animated GIF that shows diverse children across the age ranges of the class.  Not only does this make the course more approachable, it also illustrates the focus of the child development through adolescence.

My canvas has shifted from a place where information was housed to a warm welcome where the student can slowly get comfortable while finding key information.  

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Interested to see more? Get a quick tour!

It takes us many semesters to truly learn who are students are, but that learning begins with a genuine start.  My survey not only allows me to learn a little about each student but also signals that their story, needs, and individual story matters. 

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I always model risk in class.  As such, it is after I share about myself on a resource titled Getting to Know Me I ask students to submit their responses to Getting to Know You. 

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Interested to learn more about my survey? Get a quick tour!

For my icebreaker, I ask students to record audio/video responses to several Class Introduction prompts, and then respond to their co-learners. 

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As with other assignments, I take the first risk, and respond to the prompts as well. 

While we all have different stories, so much of the stories of struggle that many of my students share rings true to my own.  Those stories and the change I feel I can make are partly why I am at the community college after being at four-year institutions.

Every student deserves high-quality instruction, to feel they belong, and to be supported, no matter the institution. And while I have honed my in-person teaching over a long teaching career, the pandemic served as a mirror related to my online teaching.  

Why we teach does not differ across modalities, but how we teach does. 

We all learn more effectively in small bite-sized pieces, alongside an application of that new information.  That is the case in an in-person class and certainly online, but with online classes in the past, my tendency has not always been to follow what I know to be sound teaching.

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This short video provides students a little framing of teratogens, so they can dive a little deeper into the resources and ultimately apply it in a discussion. 

I find the Canvas grade center comment field to be a fantastic place to discuss assignments as well as connect with students.

This short video provides instructions for an assignment where students are asked to read and respond to a comment left for them in the grade center. It is an important skill but also one that, at times, causes some confusion.

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While I often wear suits, the first set of images that students see of me show my humanity.  In this short welcome video, I tell students a bit about me, my struggle, and my bumpy path along the way to earning a doctorate.