Part 3: The Welcoming Online Classroom
Please use the tabs below to view all content.
Creating a Welcoming Online Classroom
Building a welcoming space for our online students is one of the first steps we can take in fostering equity. Think about how you use your first few days of class. What might you do differently to ensure that students feel welcome, safe, and free to take intellectual and social risks?
These are themes that this part of the module will address. Equity-Minded educators welcome all students with enthusiasm and genuine caring. Often, such values can be challenging to exude in an online context. We must learn to better express ourselves without ever coming face to face with our students while teaching online.
We can address these challenges through collaboration, creativity, and honesty. For creating a welcoming learning environment, the techniques must come before the technology. In other words, if we take the time to reflect on the fundamentals of welcoming students, then our technological know-how will naturally follow.
Some fundamentals may include a couple of the other Equity Precepts. Download Equity Precepts. For instance, if we solely focus on the Canvas Home Page, this can be a space for: Representing diversity in the use of images and media. Also, creating a Partnership by using "We" "Our" and "Us" language. Demystifying our expectations with clear and concise hyperlinks and navigation tools. Let us keep these in mind as we move forward.
The Online Classroom as a Cultural Space
Consider pragmatically the first impressions that your online classroom might give when students log in to Canvas. Specifically, consider the following:
-
- Are they taken directly to the Modules Page, rather than a face page?
- If you have a home page, how much and what kind of content does it contain?
- Are there images/videos present on the home page?
- Is there an organizational theme to the home page?
Thinking about these, and more, questions can often be very informative. We encourage you to take this reflection one step further: Rather than conceptualizing your online class as a medium through which knowledge is delivered, reframe it as a learning space for your students to go. For instance, see several questions designed to assess Equity-Minded on-campus classrooms:
-
- How difficult was it to find the room? (Signage, pathways, people to guide you)
- What do you see as you walk through the door? (Decorations, lighting, seating arrangement, equipment)
- Does the space adequately accommodate the students? YES, NO (Is anyone sitting on the floor, off to the side)
- What is the condition of the classroom? (Temperature, paint, desks, etc.)
- What is the seating arrangement?
(Source: USC Center for Urban Education, Classroom Inquiry Guidelines for Equity-Minded and Culturally Inclusive Practices).
Now, think about how these questions can be modified to better assess our online class spaces. To this goal, please evaluate and write a few notes on the following questions as they apply to your online course:
-
How difficult was it to navigate through Canvas?
(a) Examine your Canvas site as if you were a new student using Canvas for the first time. Better yet, get a friend or family member to explore your site. Note their reactions about how easy or difficult it was to navigate the site.
(b) Write some notes to yourself on how the navigation might be improved. Which hyperlinks need to be more descriptive? Are the titles of the modules clear? Is there a reasonable amount of content per page? -
What do you see as you first log into the class?
(a) Again, imagine yourself as a new student who is engaging in their first distance learning college course. What do you see when you first log in? Do you feel welcomed? Do feel like this is a space that is made for you?
(b) Write some notes to yourself on how your site might make a more welcoming and impactful first impression. -
Does the online space adequately accommodate the students in discussion/creativity/collaboration?
(a) Reflect on your past experiences with online teaching. What technology/modalities do you use to bring out discussion, critical reflection, creativity and collaboration? (E.g., Discussion Boards, Zoom Breakout Rooms, Padlet, Collaborations, etc.)
(b) How successful has this been in the past? (Is everyone posting/participating? Is real learning going on? Are there opportunities for student collaboration? Are there opportunities for student creativity?)
(c) Write some notes on the ways that you feel that your past practice has fallen short of your expectations. Note ideas that you have for improvement, and questions that you have for the other participants about how they achieve these goals. -
What is the condition of the online classroom?
(a) Looking at your Canvas site as a whole, what are your general impressions? Is it organized, current, user friendly, welcoming and supportive? Is it rich with resources, or sparse? Is it visually stimulating? Do your images represent the diversity of our student body?
(b) Write some notes about how you would like to improve your site as a whole. -
What is the virtual “seating arrangement?”
(a) When we consider the seating arrangement of a physical classroom, a dominant factor is whether all desks are facing the front towards “the sage on the stage,” or whether they are arranged in a way that focuses on student collaboration. In a similar fashion, you can reflect on your online space. How much does the space focus on you, the instructor, and how often does it turn the students toward one another to collaborate and learn from one another?
(b) Write some notes about how much the site focuses on you, vs. how much it focuses on the students and their collaboration. What is your goal here, and to what extent are you achieving your goal?
By reframing such inquiries, we can better make informed decisions about creating a welcoming online learning space. Let’s continue to the next tab above to see some examples of what this may look like.