Preparing for Fall 2020 July 19, 2020

HUMANIZE
How can we humanize our blended courses for fall?

If you asked me what was one major concept educators should be embracing as we plan
and prepare our courses for fall instruction, I would argue that first and foremost it is
humanizing our blended, face-to-face, and/or fully online courses. Michelle Pacansky-
Brock, one of main researchers who has investigated and advocated for humanizing online
education, recently pointed out that “now, more than ever, we must center our teaching
practices on one thing: we are humans who are experiencing the physiological effects of
trauma.”

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In my summer ESL research writing course I’m currently teaching, I have discovered this to
certainly be the case. Most of the students in my course have had a family member or close
friend who has been infected with the COVID-19 virus. In my early 8:30 a.m. Zoom
synchronous classes I had a student who
went through a whole sleepless night prior
to our meeting. “I’m sorry,” the student
sheepishly admitted, “but I haven’t slept at
all. I’ve been up all night talking to my
family.” With a family member infected with
COVID-19, learning was at the bottom of
this student’s hierarchy of needs.

As English as Second Language educators,

we teach one of the most vulnerable
populations in higher education. Our
students face language and cultural barriers
on U.S. campuses that are even amplified
when they enter the online environment. As Image by Christo Anestev from Pixabay 
these obstacles get added onto the trauma
that our students are currently experiencing with COVID-19, the affective and cognitive
barriers to learning that they show up in our classrooms with may seem to many teachers
to be insurmountable.

Humanizing
What’s the answer? According to Pacansky-Brock, “humanizing is the antidote that will
support the success of our most vulnerable students and help you feel more connected and
appreciated too.” This approach begins by establishing a more human presence in your
online asynchronous environment by welcoming students. You set up your course so that
you can establish trust, get to know students personally and discover who will “benefit from
your high touch the most, and adapting your asynchronous online teaching according.”

Concepts Related to Humanizing

In their paper, Humanizing Online Teaching to Equitize Higher Education, Pacansky-Brock
and her co-authors describe the model of humanizing online teaching as being informed by
the following frameworks:

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Preparing for Fall 2020 July 19, 2020

• Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT),

• social presence,

• validation theory,

• Universal Design for Learning

(UDL)

One of the important aspects of this

framework, the authors note, is that
it ensures that non-cognitive aspects
of learning are guiding instructor-
student relationships and course
design.

Humanizing Fall Courses Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

While many instructors are likely to be consumed by the puzzling and changing logistics of
planning for the fall semester, making efforts to humanize their teaching is likely to take a
backseat. But it shouldn’t. This is an area where I believe collaboration and crowdsourcing
knowledge is one of the key approaches we should be taking in developing this knowledge
base.

Instructors can come up with a joint set of practices and strategies for blended
environments that draws upon the different strands of this framework for humanizing online
teaching. Instructors may discover that they have already been using some of these
strategies in their face-to-face courses. ESL instructors, for example, are likely to have
many much more experience with culturally responsive teaching (CRT) practices than other
educators in higher education, but they may have little experience or knowledge of UDL,
which is more common to K-12 teachers and instructional designers. Similarly, social
presence and validation theory gets discussed very little within most teaching circles in
higher ed outside of online education, so this is an area where I think most teachers will
need collaborate in sharing strategies as well.

At a time when university budgets are shrinking, investing financial resources in faculty
professional development may seem like an unnecessary expense. However, if one accepts

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that premise that humanizing education is one of the most crucial components in
addressing the non-cognitive barriers to learning that our students will bring with them to
their classroom this fall, then I believe university leadership should consider that one of the
best ways they can support students is to invest in equipping their faculty with the tools,
strategies and knowledge to humanize their courses. Since many of the strands of the
humanizing framework articulated by Pacansky-Brock and her colleagues fall outside of the
knowledge domains of most university faculty, this may mean universities need to provide
funding for faculty members to take online training in this area or bring in an outside expert.

Resources
In this document I’ve curated a number of resources related to humanizing online
education. They should be seen as an entry point in a discussion that I hope will continue
among yourselves, your departments, across the university and beyond. I invite you to
share your experiences with any of the practices mentioned in these resources or ones that
aren’t. I hope it seems obvious that humanizing our courses requires a team effort involving
collaboration and cross-discipline knowledge sharing.

Podcasts
• How One University is Working to ‘Humanize’ Online Teaching (EdSurge Podcast)

• Episode 64: Principles For Humanizing Online Education… and Remote Teaching/Learning
(Topcast Podcast)

• HumanizED Podcast (Hosted by Pacansky-Brock)

Articles/Blogs
• 3 Tips for Humanizing Digital Pedagogy

• CanvasChat: Humanizing Your Online Course and Connecting with Online Students

• Incentivize! Don’t Penalize: Revisiting Late Policies for Online Students

• Humanizing Online Teaching to Equitize Higher Education

• Humanizing Online Teaching and Learning: The Quest for Authenticity

• New PocketPD Guide: Humanizing Online Teaching & Learning

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• Behaviors & Strategies for Improving Online Instructor Presence

• The Humanizing Tool Buffet

Books

• Humanizing Online Teaching and Learning

Infographic
• Humanizing Online Learning

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