I’ve written previously about the institutional focus at CSU Channel Islands, my place of employment, to foster a culture of “humanized” online learning. In April, Jill Leafstedt, Kristi O’Neil-Gonzalez and I facilitated a workshop at ET4Online titled “How to Humanize Your Online Course” and next week, I will be starting a 4-week online course for the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) on the same topic. This course does require registration through ELI. A discounted rate is available to ELI members.
The ELI course will incorporate asynchronous activities, including participating in a VoiceThread conversation; participating in Twitter polls; sharing reflections/resources/questions via Twitter (#HumanizeELI); creating a high-energy course bumper video in Animoto; creating a course banner in Canva; and curating these visually-oriented content creations into a Tackk that will be posted to our course Tackkboard! The course is intended to pull higher education faculty, instructional designers/technologists, administrators (and other roles I’m missing) into an immersive learning environment that is designed around the principles of humanizing an online class.
An ELI digital badge will be earned by those who are willing to step out of their comfort zones and into the exciting landscape of content creation!
The asynchronous activities are anchored by the following four live sessions:
- “The Foundations of Humanizing”
- I am the presenter for this one. Tues, 5/12; 10am-11:30am PT/1pm-2:30pm ET
- “VoiceThread for Universal Design: Supporting the needs of diverse learners”
- Guest presenters: Jaimie Hoffman and Jaime Hannans from CSU Channel Islands.
- Wed, 5/20; 10am-11:30am PT/1pm-2:30pm ET
- “Reaching out, being there: What we know and don’t know about social presence”
- Guest presenters: Patrick Lowenthal, Boise State University and Joanna Dunlap, University of Colorado, Denver
- Thurs, 5/28; 10am-11:30am PT/ 1pm-2:30pm ET
- “Humanizing share session!”
- In this session, I will invite volunteers from our course to share their Humanizing Showcases and reflect on their experiences and key takeaways.
