Humanizing Your Online Course (3 week short course)

September 21 – October 4 

Description 

This course is intended for Minnesota State faculty who are either teaching or planning to teach an online or hybrid course and are interested applying evidence-based strategies for humanizing the learning experience through effective facilitation and course design. The course is online and asynchronous. Although there are no scheduled class meetings, participants may engage in virtual meetings with other students and course instructors as needed and at their convenience. The course is designed to take no more than 10 hours of work per week to complete. 

This is a facilitated, collaborative learning experience that models many of the humanizing strategies that instructors might choose to include in their own courses. Participants will learn experientially by engaging with an instructor and colleagues from across the system in activities that showcase humanizing practices in action. 

Faculty will develop their professional knowledge by reviewing the current theory and research in the area of humanizing online learning and engaging in independent reading in their own disciplines, contributing what they discover to a shared knowledge base. They will then reflect on their own teaching style and practices and select evidence-based, humanizing instructional strategies for implementation or refinement in their own online courses. They will evaluate and select specific techniques and tools for supporting those strategies and learn how to apply them. 

By the end of the course, faculty will be able to make informed decisions regarding humanizing instructional strategies, they will have a fully articulated plan for implementing and refining two or three humanizing strategies in their own courses, and they will have the opportunity to join a growing learning community through which they can continue to learn and share the results of their humanizing strategies with colleagues from across the system. 

Introduction Video from the Instructor

Coming soon!

Course Learning Objectives 

• Define “humanizing” as it relates to online teaching and learning and explain why it’s important. 
• Discuss research findings that connect humanizing facilitation and course design strategies with online student success. 
• Review the literature review on the impact of humanizing strategies specific to your own discipline/course and contribute your findings to a shared knowledge base. 
• Experience and evaluate at least three tools and techniques, including one that’s new to you, for implementing evidence-based humanizing strategies. 
• Develop a fully articulated implementation plan for introducing or enhancing two to three evidence-based humanizing strategies in your online courses that best fit your teaching style, including selecting the tools and techniques you will use to implement your chosen strategies, developing an assessment method, and possibly sharing your findings with the course’s learning community. 

Technical Skill Requirements

• Use a web browser  
• Create, save and upload Word documents  
• Navigate Microsoft Windows  
• Create and send an email using your Minnesota State account  
• Evaluate and decide whether or not to use OneDrive  
• Perform basic tasks associated with the following D2L Brightspace tools: Content, Quizzes and Assignments 

Materials Required 

Prior to beginning this course, you should complete the following activities: 

• Select a course that you’d like to which you’d like to apply these concepts 
• Contact your campus D2L/IT Helpdesk to create a D2L Brightspace “Sample/Sandbox” Course if you do not have one.

Suggested Audience 

Faculty (Full-time and part-time), Instructional Designers and Technologists, and Faculty Developers/Trainers 

Estimated Time Commitment 

Most participants are able to complete this course by committing 4-6 hours per week. 

Reflect on your Professional Development 

As you progress through this course, please consider how you can use the assignments as a way to highlight your work on your Professional Development Plan. Consider sharing your work with your leadership team. 

Registration Required

Use the RSVP tool below to register. There is a limit of 30 participants per course.

Because we need time to enroll participants into the corresponding D2L Brightspace Course site, we will close RSVPs one week prior to the start of this course. 

Reminders Coming:  We use the email address you provided to send you reminder emails as the event date gets closer, but we suggest you add this event to your calendar. 

Data Use: Campuses want to know if their faculty are using the educational development resources and opportunities made available from Minnesota State to best tailor their on-campus offerings. We will provide participation information upon campus request. You may opt out of this report by contacting ed-innovations@minnstate.edu. We plan to use your contact information to send you information about upcoming events on the NED Events Calendar for which you may be interested.

Accommodations: If you require accommodations (live captioning, etc.) to participate in this event, please send an email to the person at the bottom of this page. 

Course Location 

This course is hosted and facilitated using shared D2L Brightspace instance of Minnesota State called, MnSite. Using the RSVP tool below allows us to send you reminders about this course and share important information following the course including how to access the corresponding D2L Brightspace course site.  

Questions?  

Please read the Short Course FAQ or contact the facilitator, Ken Graetz