Practical things to try

So as humans, we are very social creatures and we are wired to want to be connected to other people. But in online classes, as you know, students learn in isolation from each other and from their instructor. And instructors are also isolated from their students. And that creates a rather challenging dynamic for some people, some folks can get over this okay. We know that online courses are generally designed using text. And that can be a problem because when a person is in isolation, they’re more likely to have anxiety. And this is really influenced also by a person’s identity and their past experiences that they bring into a class.

So for example, a black student is gonna be very different from a white student because of their past experiences in education. And we know that students of color are likely to experience microaggressions in education. And all of that really influences their experiences when they come into your class, they’re bringing that with them. And so it’s important to know that. And it’s important to think about your class as actually an experience, right? As opposed to just content and work to get done. So when a student is coming into your class, you are gonna have students that are scanning their environment for cues of safety. And when a person does that in a physical environment, they’re scanning for visual cues. And the cues they’re looking for are things like a smile or an intonation in a voice that sounds friendly.

So the verbal and the nonverbal cues, that are absent in an online course unless you intentionally bring them in. That’s a big part of supporting your students’ success. And so for that reason, a really important practice is becoming fluent with video technologies. But I’m not talking about long videos. I’m not talking about videos that are some big production. I’m talking about videos like the one I’m making here with my webcam or videos with a cell phone, right? If you have one of these, that’s all you need. Take your students somewhere. Get out of your academic environment. Go in your backyard. Take them on a walk. Do a video from the gas station, or when you’re on vacation. Bringing in brief and perfect videos into your online class is really fun. And your students will love it. They’re gonna know who you are. You’re gonna be able to convey your sense of care for your students right off the bat. And you’ll be able to start your students’ experience with a sense of human connection instead of isolation.

There’s one more thing I want to acknowledge about videos though. This is really important. I’m coming into this conversation from a place of privilege. The color of my skin, my age, my able body, my gender, my language, right? They afford me certain privileges. And so, what it means for me to record a video and share it with my students, means something very different for you depending on what your identity is. And I wanna acknowledge that because I recognise that I can only see this through my own position, my own positionality. And so our identities inform the risks that are also involved with everything that we do in teaching. And this is certainly included.

A really important part of humanising is getting to know who your students are, and identifying your students that are your high opportunity students. So let’s talk a little bit about what that means.

A really helpful strategy that I like to encourage faculty to consider is integrating a getting to know you survey in the first week of your class. Your students complete this survey and by seeing the survey, it sends them the cue that you care about who they are. And by completing the survey they earn a few points right off the bat and that is a helpful way to start off successfully. In the survey, there are lots of different questions that you can ask, but some of the ones that are super helpful to me include things like asking for tips to pronounce their name, identifying their pronoun.

And then there’s two more that I really want to stress. One is to ask your students to describe how they’re feeling about your class in one word. So leave it completely open-ended. And from that question, you are going to be able to identify your high opportunity students or your students who will benefit the most from your high touch. So when you scan the results of that question you’ll see students who say, “Fine, excited, intrigued.” You’re also going to find students who say, “Anxious, nervous, overwhelmed.” Those are your high opportunity students. Those are your students who need your high touch. They’re the ones who will benefit from your high touch the most.

I know you don’t have the time to send individualised voice, video messages to all your students, but if you deliver a personalised voice or video message to those students, to your high opportunity students you are providing the support that they need to be successful in your class.

Another question that I highly recommend that you ask is to share one thing that might interfere with your success in this class. And from that question, you’re going to be able to identify your students who are working full-time and going to school, your students who are single parents and working and going to school, your students who are taking care of their own families, they’re parents, supporting their parents. All kinds of things you’ll learn about.

Just this term I had one student who shared with me that she was having surgery on both of her jaws at particular week in the class. That was really important for me to know that and I made a note of it and let her know right off the bat that I saw her and that I had it on my calendar and after that date passed I reached out to her, sent her a message and in the subject line it said, “Checking in on you” with her name and I asked her how she was doing? And she has been so incredibly grateful for that individualised attention and care. She says it helped her not only recover better but it helped her do better in the class because she wasn’t as stressed.

So identifying your high opportunity students with a getting to know you survey is very, very important. It allows for you to adapt your teaching and target your high touch to the students who will benefit from it the most.

Have you ever had a person in your life who pushed you, who challenged you, who made you work harder than maybe you even thought you could? That person was a warm demander.

Warm demander pedagogy comes from the work of Judith Kleinfeld, who did research with students, indigenous students, in Alaska way back in the 1970s, and warm demander pedagogy is rooted in relationships, but it’s not just about relationships. It uses instructor-student relationships as a foundation and a warm demander is an instructor who uses that relationship to nudge students with care and push at the same time.

So the students know that you care about them, but they also know that you have very high expectations for them and that you’re going to be there to help them, to support them to achieve those goals in the end. So that’s what warm demander pedagogy is, and it’s so important because it really ensures that we’re using human connection to enable, to empower more of our students to achieve the potential that they’re capable of.