How to humanize your online classroom: Part 1

Before we dive into this topic, let me define what I mean by humanizing your online classroom and why it is so important. A humanized classroom is simply one where students are valued for who they are, and that they feel known, secure and respected. It’s important because in those conditions students can flourish and achieve their potential, and it’s even more important in an online classroom because a focused intention is needed to create it. 

Here at Hāpara, we have years of expertise in powering awesome online learning, anywhere, any place. I want to share some essential building blocks or scaffolds by which you can create a humanized classroom, how you can apply them to your online classroom –whether it is face-to-face, entirely online or a blend of both– and how our tools are designed to help.  

There’s a lot of good information to cover here, so this blog is in two parts. Right now in Part 1, I am going to cover the first three scaffolds: connected community, formative feedback and transparency. Let’s begin!

Connected community 

At the heart of a humanized classroom is a place where teachers and students are able to build meaningful relationships. For the most part, learning is the result of a meaningful relationship. The student-teacher relationship is critical to student success and learners are more likely to remain engaged in online learning if they feel they are part of a trusting class community. Socio-emotional learning (SEL) in a face-to-face setting tends to occur and evolve naturally. In an online setting, it needs to be intentional, purposeful, consistent and continual, to build student-teacher and student-student relationships. 

There are a plethora of great, practical ways to integrate SEL into your online classroom. You can check in with your students during online calls, play games or icebreaker exercises, set daily challenges and take weekly “temperature checks” via Google forms for example. By using the messaging functions in Hāpara Highlights you can private message individual students during synchronous online meetings (a functionality not available if you are using Google Meet) and so reach out directly, and crucially in the moment, to give assistance or encouragement. You can of course also use video as part of your asynchronous learning strategy to add a personal element and build connection further. In Hāpara Workspace it’s easy to embed all these SEL practices right into the lesson cards to have fun, pique the interest of your students and integrate relationship building seamlessly and naturally. 

The benefits of a connected community also extend to parents and teachers. Regarding parents, figure out how best you can communicate with them as they will be your biggest supporters if you keep them informed. And of course, teachers need a space to connect, share best practices, get resources, tips and ask questions. At Hāpara we provide a vibrant global and local community platform where teachers can connect in secure no-judgment spaces to share ideas, ask each other questions, and share the thousands of K-12 learning Workspaces they have created publicly so others can benefit from them. After all, sharing is caring!

Formative assessment and feedback

Formative assessment is critical to learners as it lets them know where they are in their learning journey, where they stand and what they need to do. Timely feedback or a redirect, if students are off track, can feel easier in a face-to-face setting, but the same is possible online. The first question I think you need to ask yourself is, how will I organize to give every child formative feedback on their work prior to collecting it for assessment? Having that front of mind means you can put the processes in place to ensure it happens as you plan and share your lessons. Keep in mind too the characteristics of effective feedback –it is goal-referenced, specific, timely, tangible and transparent, actionable, ongoing and consistent*. It’s important to build reflection into student’s work and guide them to document their progress, check for understanding, and clearly signpost when they should do that. Plus of course, you can still check for understanding during synchronous learning time. These just-in-time checking measures can help you plan the direction and format of learning for your class, groups and individuals.

Hāpara developed our Teacher Dashboard to enable teachers to provide timely, ongoing formative feedback to learners starting with a single view of all students. It turns G Suite from Docs and Slides floating around in cyberspace into a fully pedagogical, instructional tool, where you have a birds-eye view of all of your student’s work in G Suite visible in one Student Tile. At a glance, you can see learners’ progress, leave comments on their work and submit grades right from one place –increasing efficiency for both in-person and online teaching and helping students progress their learning. 

Transparency 

When developing a healthy digital culture in your school it must be transparent. 

From how you create assignments to your learner expectations to what platform you use to how you frame your acceptable use policy–all of it matters. 

Assignments need to have a clear aim, showing what tasks need to be completed to achieve the stated criteria for success. You need a user-friendly platform that students, teachers and parents can easily access, navigate and use. Be clear on the format of assignments, when they are due, and keep that structure in place between different settings (in person, online or hybrid). 

Rather than being punitive and dictatorial in tone, your school or district’s acceptable use policy can transform to empower students and teach digital citizenship, instilling a sense of purpose and responsibility.  (By the way, you can check out my webinar on the Evolution of Digital Citizenship here).

Teachers can use Hāpara Highlights, our ethically managed approach to managing learners’ online browsing activity, to seamlessly blend digital citizenship skills into their classes and use the tools to gradually release responsibility from the teacher to the student so they can become independent digital consumers.  

I hope you have found the first three scaffolds of building a humanized classroom useful and that they have given you lots to think about and implement. Look out for Part 2 coming soon when I will cover learner agency and choice, differentiation and personalization, and collaboration.