Fresno State was offered the opportunity to participate in the Humanizing Online STEM Academy as a partner institution. Over the last two years, we have had 25 faculty from a broad range of disciplines complete the academy, including general chemistry, bioinformatics, mechanical engineering, geomatics and more. I was one of two instructional designers on our campus to complete a faculty support cohort in 2022. One of the concepts where I was challenged to continue to grow personally by the Academy was the area of self-disclosure. It’s not about being an open book with all areas of your life, but rather lowering the fence of professionalism enough that my humanity can be seen by the humans on the other side. And by accepting the vulnerability that comes with being seen when that fence is lowered, I will have the possibility of better seeing the people on the other side better as well. In many contexts, I have found myself to be a tall fence person (sometimes with a row of Italian Cypress along the fence line to boot), but I am encouraged by my Academy experience to adopt a new view.
I first encountered the tem ‘humanizing’ in 2017 through an infographic created by Dr. Michelle Pacansky-Brock, then at the CSU Channel Islands. Though I wasn’t teaching any classes, the general ethos of humanizing resonated deeply and began to inform my work. I shared one such example on social media in November of 2019. I ‘humanized’ a job announcement for a student assistant position in my office at that time (designed with the aid of one of my brilliantly talented student assistants) that brought in color (imagine that!) and more welcoming, supportive job description and expectations. That ‘humanized’ job posting garnered nearly 40 student applications where the previous design had interested only about 4-5. Humanizing worked for me!
The Humanizing Online STEM Academy provided our faculty participants not only with tools (like Adobe Express, Flip, Canva, and Google Sites) and techniques (like a liquid syllabus, bumper videos, and a wisdom wall) to design and redesign their online classes to promote psychological inclusion and belonging, but also offered a living, breathing example of what a humanized asynchronous online class can look and feel like. Just as we wouldn’t want to impose expectations on our students without scaffolding the experience while providing support and high expectation, so too was the approach with faculty participants in the Academy.
I recently spoke with one of our faculty participants, Dr. Brandy Anglen, Lecturer in Earth and Environmental Sciences, about her experience completing the Academy. She shared about taking time during family road trips to visit national parks to develop quick videos for an online general education course in geology. As she explained, “There’s great examples of different geologic principles, which is part of what I teach in my courses. Having me in front of a rock outcrop at the Grand Canyon is a lot different than just trying to explain the Grand Canyon or showing you a picture. If you see me there, you realize that it actually exists. It’s a place you can go. I think it’s a good way for students to make those real-world connections from my course materials.” This is just one example of bringing the human into the online learning experience coming out of the academy. View the video below to listen to my 13-minute conversation with Dr. Anglen.
View all Learning Curve conversations.
In this age of algorithms, and AI chatbots and immersive VR, finding ways to keep and express our humanity and connection in our learning experiences, particularly online, is vitally important and efforts like the #humanizeOL movement are essential to our work toward student success and achieving equitable outcomes.
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