Empathetic Design for Online Courses

Don’t compete with the internet -- you won’t win. 

If you are teaching or meeting online, you are competing for your participants' attention with literally the entire internet. Not to mention their phone, every social media platform, and their fax machine, beeper, or Alexa, depending on what generation they’re in. 

If you try to compete on the internet’s terms -- that is, text, information, moving pictures -- you will fail. Fancy slides, information-heavy lectures, movie clips... you won’t win. You cannot out-internet the internet. So don’t try. 

Instead, win with the main thing the internet cannot provide: true human connection. Relationships. Interaction and care. Helping people learn about themselves and others through provoking thought in real-time. Offer your students the main thing they otherwise will not have in their quarantine: true humanity.

In my work teaching leadership development courses online, I've had the unique challenge of helping people from Malaysia to Tanzania to Mexico connect in deep ways with one another, despite being twelve timezones apart and in different organizations. With such a span of distance, only ever meeting in two dimensions, creating true human connection is not easy. I have had to develop a set of pedagogical tools that I use to increase humanity in my online spaces. I offer a few below, including both technical and emotional elements.

As I teach in my courses, emotion is what creates motivation and movement. In order to motivate people to act and move together toward a shared purpose, you need to help them feel agency, connection, solidarity, possibility, and hope. In this moment of fear, that is needed more than ever.

I believe that we can create pedagogy and structure to design for connection, solidarity, possibility, and hope. I see this moment as a unique opportunity to re-frame our meetings and the way we connect with one another to enable these emotions in our teams and groups. As a meeting facilitator, this is your chance to re-invite your team into their full humanity and motivate them in a new way. While this may sound daunting, I believe that a few structures and practices can actually go a very long way.

So here are ten ideas, from one human to another (with thanks to the internet for enabling our humanity in this moment):

1. Set norms at the beginning, and set them together. Your online community -- just like your in-person one -- will have norms, whether you set them or not. For example, is it alright to log in five minutes late? Is it alright to call in, or have your video off? How do you share speaking time? If you do not intentionally set these types of norms, your group will implicitly set them through its actions. So consider asking: how do we want to be human together here? What a unique opportunity to re-set the terms together.

• Consider the purpose of your community and what norms will best suit. In many cases, it’s not a problem if you don’t see people’s faces. Yet in other cases it will significantly reduce the classroom experience if half of the people are not showing. 
• Consider the following norms: We will... Have our video on at all times. Have access to the chat and be ready to type. Mute ourselves when we are not speaking. Be in a quiet location and use headphones to reduce background noise. Have a good internet connection. Be at a screen, rather than on the phone. Start on time. End on time. Use timers in between to ensure that we stay on time. Be off all other work and phones. Participate actively with full presence. Use the “rename” function to add pronouns to our names -- include first name, last name, and your pronouns (ie: Rosi Greenberg, she/her/hers). What else do you want to commit to one another?
• This is not about imposing norms on your group. It's about having them commit to one another about how to be in community together. This is your chance to invite that conversation, not to impose rules.
• Norms are intentions, which means they are always in. tension. So, what will you do in those moments when people don't follow through on their intentions? How will you lean into the tension then, and use that moment for calling people to be their highest selves? Use that for being extra-human too!

2. Set roles for each session. Roles, like norms, will emerge implicitly. Perhaps someone is always the Devil’s Advocate, or the process person, or the naysayer or the one who reminds us when the meeting is almost up. Consider noticing these and designating explicit roles that will serve the purpose of your work. 

• For technical online elements, consider assigning a whiteboard scribe, a chat monitor, a note-taker, and a mute captain. If you are able to assign a co-host, consider having them take care of breakout rooms for you. Perhaps also assign a health monitor to lead people in stretching, taking bio breaks, and washing their hands!
• If you have over 40 participants, consider designating 5-7 representatives with whom the facilitator will primarily interact. The reps can be in touch over chat or in breakout rooms with a designated group of their peers and be responsible for channeling questions, ideas, or comments to you. The reps can shift every session. 
• You might also play with less technical roles. For example “The One Who Holds the Fear” -- then anytime someone speaks from a place of fear, you can “hand off” that fear to The One Who Holds The Fear. Or what about “The Optimistic Visionary” or “Emotional Support Checker-Inner”? Perhaps these are ‘hats’ that you all wear and can explicitly don when needed.

3. Call on participants (by name). Normally I am a huge fan of “wait time” -- waiting for several people to have hands up before calling on someone, or before speaking again. But I find that this can get awkward online, because people are worried about talking over one another, so I find that it helps to call on people to participate. This circumvents awkward silences while people wonder if they should talk. If the question you’re asking requires some critical thinking, you might say “I’ll give you a few moments of think-time and then I’ll call on someone.” Raising hands can work, but can be cumbersome, especially if you have a lot of people in the room. Consider whether you need a response to be truly voluntary or not. How do you want to increase the human participation in this meeting?

• Calling on people yourself gives you the ability to target certain questions to certain levels of learners, to ensure equitable participation, and to bring out multiple viewpoints. Consider keeping a list of who you call on, or little cards with their names next to your computer, so that you don’t leave anyone out. Consider gathering 3 answers to the same question without responding right away, if it’s one that invites critical thought. Or, facilitate conversation by asking one participant to build off of another’s answer.
• If you’re going “around in a circle” consider calling on someone and telling the next person who is “on deck” (Jennie you’re up and Carlos you’re on deck… Carlos you’re up and Jaqui you’re on deck…) OR let people choose the next person. Just keep track of who has gone so that you don’t leave anyone out! Don’t go around in a circle if you have more than 20 participants. In that case, do breakouts, use the chat, or limit to a few who share.
• Consider letting people know how long of a response you are looking for. For brief responses, consider saying “in the span of one breath... “ or “in one sentence…” (if you say “in 2-3 sentences, people often go for 5 or 10)

4. Consider what you want participants to look at. When should they be looking at you? (use speaker view). When should they be looking at each other? (use gallery view). When is it helpful to see a slide or an image or someone taking active notes on the session itself? (use screen share). When is it helpful for everyone to contribute to a shared document? (use the whiteboard or a Google document on screen share)

• Consider beginning and ending with people looking at one another, if you are aiming to build relationships in your learning community. Looking at a slide deck can get tedious, so if you’re using slides, either make your slides visually engaging or switch back and forth between speaker view (when they can see you) and screenshare of your slides. 
• While it can be tempting to just record audio and pair it with a slide deck, that's way less engaging, relational, and, well, human. It doesn't create a holding environment for your students or build connections.

5. Use breakout rooms to increase participation and interaction. Breakout rooms are an excellent way to increase participant engagement. They allow more participants to talk for more of the time. They also raise the bar for engagement and reduce people’s ability to multitask by increasing social presence. 

• To use breakout rooms well, have a clear task, clear agenda, and clear timing. Consider designating a facilitator or time-keeper to keep each breakout on task, even if they are just pairs.

6. Use the chat creatively. You can use the chat to ask a quick question that everyone chimes in on, in one sentence or less. Then, follow up on any interesting answers by calling that student by name to share more. This way, everyone needs to be ready at all times to engage.

• You can ask participants to summarize a few key points or offer takeaways at the end, as well as questions throughout. If you have a “chat monitor” (see roles), they can follow along and gather questions that pop up
• The chat can be a great place to have everyone check in by answering one check in question. These can be funny, quirky, or emotionally resonant. 
• For longer writing or shared work, consider using Google Drive simultaneously.

7. Do a check-in. Start class right on time -- if you wait 3 minutes after the hour to start, you set a new norm that it is OK to miss those first 3 minutes. Use that time creatively to make people feel seen and held. You might offer a fun check in question in the first three minutes of class, while people are signing on. Everyone can either type their answer in the chat or share verbally. Make them engaging and creative enough and you’ll create a whole new culture for your classroom that students don’t want to miss. Such as: What’s the most distracting thing about the room you’re in? What’s one “guilty pleasure” you have? What did people say about you as a child? What did you eat for breakfast this morning? What’s the one thing you wish you’d stockpiled for Coronavirus but didn’t? (anything related to your session content!!) You can also do a check out by asking for one key takeaway or summary point. Capture these (and check them against your lesson objectives!)

8. Good pedagogy online is very similar to good pedagogy in person.

• Limit lectures and long stretches of presentation whenever possible. Break up long lectures by asking for quick responses in the chat or calling on someone by name to answer a question or summarize. Ask: Who do I want to be doing most of the talking? How much interaction do I want between participants, and why? Pause for key insights, summaries, and takeaways. You can ask students to write these in the chat or whiteboard.
• Laugh, have fun, be a person. Get curious. Enjoy the social art of learning together.
• Speaking of having fun: make it fun and playful! Have a theme of the day, like “pajama day” or “flowered shirt day”. Invite everyone to wear a cool hat. Invite everyone to have tea or bring their favorite snack to class (at their computer). You might even take a “screen capture of the day” with all this. If you want to get really creative, mail them all something -- a lei, a party hat, a backdrop!

9. Ask your participants what needs they have, and what accommodations would most help them succeed and thrive in this new environment. They are the ones doing the work, so they know their own learning best. This can be a great opportunity to learn from them.

• Consider asking them “What worked well about this?” and “What could we do differently next time?” at the end of the first session or first week. Saving a few minutes for this -- even through the chat function -- can help you get valuable feedback about the learner or participant’s perspective.

10. Record and watch yourself at least once. See how you look from the participant’s perspective. How engaging are you? What might you improve? And if you’re thinking “Why in the world should I watch myself?” consider this: If you’re not willing to watch a segment of your own class, why should students?!

I offer all of these with love and curiosity for the unique opportunity and experiment of this moment. Who knows -- maybe once we're back in classrooms and meeting spaces the humanity can continue there too!

Thanks & Credit to: Aditi Parekh, Marshall Ganz, and many others who have influenced these ideas!