Best Practices for Digital Classrooms

ASU Online has students all around the world. For some locations, ordering a textbook can take up to 5 weeks to arrive. Does your syllabus and online course provide a link to a digital alternative to the physical version of the textbook? If not, we recommend:

Review the textbooks used in the course 

• Search the Internet to determine whether there are digital versions or equivalents for the text
• Include a link to the digital version or encourage students to seek a digital version of the textbook if available
• Consider discussing the course material with an ASU Librarian to see if the first chapter of the text can be placed in the course

By providing a digital alternative, students can gain quicker access to their course materials, which for some courses and locations may be the difference between jumping right into the course the first day or waiting for a text to arrive. At a minimum you might consider mentioning in the syllabus that there is a digital alternative available, just so they know of the option.

An ASU Online course syllabus typically should include textbook information and digital textbook information (if available), a grading procedure, a late or missed work policy, student conduct and academic integrity, and accessibility statement information. Ensure that the faculty name and contact information as well as any dates or time-related information is up-to-date for the current session. Here are the ASU statements, policies, and information that typically appear in ASU Online course syllabi. You can copy and paste the statements into the syllabus in Canvas.

In addition, the Office of the University Provost recommends adopting student-centered practices for your syllabus, including:

• Using a welcoming tone
• Providing opportunities for students to weigh in on some classroom policies
• Providing opportunities for students to make some choices about how to demonstrate what they've learned
• Considering flexible grading policies, flexible absence policies, and "second-chance" policies

Due dates (and any course pages that may need it) should be updated for the current session. Please ensure that the assignments and other learning activities have due dates for the session. You can update all assignment due dates by clicking the "Assignments" link, and then click the dropdown menu next to the assignment to edit the dates.  Alternatively If you have questions about how to update course date information, please contact your ASU Online Instructional Designer.

One powerful way for faculty to increase the feeling of virtual instructor presence is through a welcome video.  Some faculty create course welcome videos that introduce the course in general and motivate student’s interest as they begin the learning experience.   Other faculty create introduction videos that introduce themselves, help students connect with them through video, and add a human element to a course that increases the connection with faculty. Many are a combination of both. 

All faculty teaching ASU Online o-courses for the fully online degree programs are welcome to schedule an appointment with the New Media Studio to create these videos. One of our  Media Specialists will record the video, edit it, and send you a link to the video for your course. There are three media studio locations:, Skysong (corner of McDowell and Scottsdale Road), and two on the second level of the CPCOM on the Tempe Campus.

You might also consider using the Academic Media Studio to develop other media for your course (welcome video, course tour video, interviews or mini-lecture videos that clarify challenging concepts to students). In many cases, recordings can take less than an hour of your time and the product is of very high quality. Videos can be recorded in one of our media studios, or you can handle it yourself in your office or home using ScreenPal, which records your computer screen and narration as you narrate. Your Instructional Designer can provide more information about the different options.

If interested, please visit the Academic Media studio website to schedule an appointment with one of the studios or discuss with your Instructional Designer or email [email protected]

The Vice Provost's Pre- to Early-Semester Checklist asks that faculty send a welcome email 3-5 days before the session start date using the class roster link on your My ASU homepage. You may review sample welcome messages on the Provost's website.

Within the first few days of your course, by announcement and by your welcome and introduction, you may emphasize that you care about each student’s participation and success in your classes. Then consider ways to build connections with students and create a sense of belonging as they continue throughout the course. Express appreciation and encouragement for diverse ideas, experiences, and perspectives. Be explicit about valuing diversity and inclusion in your course, both in ideas and perspectives, as well as interaction with instructors and students. You might explore the "Caring for Students Playbook", that outlines six recommendations provided by the Online Learning Consortium.

Why Help Students Make Connections?

Studies have shown fostering connections through a learning community that weaves throughout a course experience has quite a few benefits including, but not limited to, the following:

• Enhance academic performance, increase interaction with faculty members, and foster cooperation with peers on learning tasks (Zhao & Kuh, n.d., pp. 130-131);
• Relate course to experiences in/out of the classroom, provide prompt feedback (assignments, questions), and engage with students who don't participate in the classroom (Junco, Heiberger & Loken, 2010);
• Provide "opportunities for deeper understanding and integration" (Gabelnick, MacGregor, Matthews & Smith, 1990, p. 19);a
• Support shared knowledge, shared knowing, and shared responsibility (Tinto, 2003, p. 2); and
• "Give students a sense of belonging" and "Provide a network of support and collaboration" (McGee & Reis, 2012, p. 16).

Why Should We (Show That We) Care?

• Caring is attending to person and performance. Teachers model personal values such as patience, persistence and responsibility while incorporating skills such as self-determination throughout their curriculum.  "In other words, culturally responsive caring teachers cultivate efficacy and agency in ethnically diverse students" (p. 64).
• Caring is action-provoking. It is not dumbing down rigor. To the contrary, caring teachers demonstrate respect for students, provide choices and work to ensure information is taught in an understandable manner. In an online course, a teacher might take time to develop a template for students to assist them with creating an outline; record a video to demonstrate how to complete an assignment; provide model papers for students to consider in advance; organize complex projects into stages with clear deliverables; provide low-stake, formative assessments that foster confidence in students and scaffold their learning towards a summative assessment.
• Caring Prompts Effort and Achievement. Tell your story...of struggle, failure, success, or achievement. Neuroscience shows that when a person listens to another person tell a story, similar parts of the listener and speakers brains are activated. This process, known as neural coupling, demonstrates that story-telling builds empathy. Designing assignments that provide students with the option to reflect on their life experiences can improve cognitive understanding between the students and the instructor. Let them know they are not alone in their learning process and demonstrate the importance of applying a growth mindset--that is, "the understanding that abilities and intelligence can be developed" (Dweck, 2007).
• Caring is multidimensional responsiveness. Caring is a process. When teachers are committed, competent, confident and knowledgeable about the content in cultural pluralism, they are placed "... in an ethical, emotional and academic partnership with ethnically diverse students.  This partnership is anchored in respect, honor, integrity, resource-sharing, and a deep belief in the possibility of transcendence, that is, an unequivocal belief that marginalized students not only can but will improve their school achievement under the tutelage of competent and committed teachers who act to ensure that this happens" (p. 69). 

---OETraining - E8:Connection & Belonging - CC

There is also a 10 Minutes for Excellence module available on Building Community.

Office hours are a great way to show students that you are willing to invest in their learning experience by providing one on one clarifications and responses, if needed. Just like in a campus immersion course, students use virtual office hours as an opportunity to ask clarification questions or discuss other items that are relevant and important to them. Using Zoom can help provide an opportunity for students to interact with you during the virtual office hours. It may be helpful to post reminders using the announcements tool so students know they are happening.

Inviting Inclusive Discussions Around Academic Integrity

You might discuss academic integrity from within the context of your course or as part of assignment to help ensure all students understand what academic integrity and plagiarism mean within the context of the course.

In order to create a culture of academic integrity that also integrates the diverse understandings, below are a few suggestions created from Brown University, with a particular emphasis on including international students and multilingual learners.

Conversations Around Academic Integrity

A foundational step in creating a culture of academic integrity is for instructors to first ask themselves and one another, “What does it mean for students to do their own work in my discipline? Why does it matter?” (Lang, 2013, pg. 203). This conversation can then be brought into the classroom and openly discussed with students. Such dialogue around what academic honesty is and more importantly, what it looks like in the context of the classroom, can help instructors to outline clear reasons for policies and to determine where continued conversation and learning is needed.

Additionally, initiating conversations around which style guides are preferred in different disciplines can help students to understand not only how to use a certain citation style, but why. Madigan, Johnson, and Linton (1995) outline the ways in which the rhetorical conventions of APA style, including hedging and disagreement, are intentionally used to reflect the norms of the field and the shared language of experts within it. Similarly, citation can be framed as a “courtship ritual” in which writers are able to gain (or lose) status in the community of their discipline (Rose, 1996). Students may be more likely to engage in a conversation that frames citation as a means in which they, as scholars, can enter into and interact with their chosen field, rather than a set of rules that must be followed.

Student Experiences and Expectations

Students bring different experiences and expectations to the classroom based on their linguistic, cultural, and educational backgrounds. It is true that culture may influence writing style and approaches to citation, but these differences are often not as great as they are made out to be. A Brown graduate student from China explains that, in his experience, the practices and expectations for citing in China are similar to those in the United States: “We had a compulsory course on ‘literature search and citation’ as part of our curriculum.” Asking students about their previous experiences can provide a useful starting point and allow professors to build on students’ existing knowledge. Moreover, scholarship consistently demonstrates that contextual factors -- such as the culture of academic integrity and classroom practices -- are as or more important than student backgrounds in influencing academic integrity (Lang, 2014; McCabe, Butterfield, & Treviño, 2012). 

Several recommendations are shared on Inclusive Practices for Addressing Academic Integrity from Brown University. There is also a 10 Minutes for Excellence on Maintaining Academic Integrity

Visible Instructor presence is critical for online courses. Since students can’t tell when instructors are logging onto the course, it’s important for instructors to post messages intermittently that help students know that they are there. Announcements can be a great way to share updates, current events, clarify items in the course, or to just share an interesting message that helps students feel an ongoing connection with their instructor. In addition to using announcements, instructors can introduce themselves to their students via a welcome introduction video or sprinkle their comments throughout the discussion forums, both of which help to create visible instructor presence.

There is also a 10 Minutes for Excellence on Creating Instructor Presence

When students reach out with questions or inquiries, sometimes they will wait until they hear back from their instructor before proceeding through the assignment. Because of this, responding to inquiries within 24 hours can be really impactful. In addition to this, when assignments are submitted, we recommend grading assignments within 48 hours so students can quickly gauge how they are doing and be able to make adjustments as they continue their learning experience.

ASU Online students are incredibly diverse and may vary from traditional, on-ground learners. They are, on average, older and have additional responsibilities that require their time in addition to educational pursuits. Many ASU Online students hold full-time jobs, have children, or have military or other civil and community responsibilities. Often they need education to improve or change career paths, and they may choose online courses and programs due to the flexibility that online learning affords. 

Strive to be flexible to help support students when issues arise that might derail their learning goals. Consider the needs of online students by striving to be flexible and by connecting students with the supportive resources available, such as their Success Coaches, Advisors, the Student Accessibility and Inclusive Learning Services (SAILS), technical support and other ASU services.

Why Help Students Make Connections?

Communication is key! Creating opportunities for online learners to make connections can seem like a "nice to have," rather than a "need to have," course element. In other words, don't we have enough to do? Why is it important to help students make personal connections in an online class? To start, we humans are social creatures--students participating in an online course can sometimes feel disconnected or even lonely. This lack of connection causes some students to drop online classes and affects the academic performance of others. Taking it one step further, we humans are social learners. That is, we learn from and with each other. So fostering community in your online class provides opportunities for students to inspire each other and to learn from each other.

Studies have shown fostering connections through a learning community that weaves throughout a course experience has quite a few benefits including, but not limited to the following:

• Enhances academic performance, increases interaction with faculty members, and fosters cooperation with peers on learning tasks (Zhao & Kuh, n.d., pp. 130-131);
• Relates the course to experiences in and out of the classroom, provides prompt feedback (assignments, questions), and engages students who don't participate in the classroom (Junco, Heiberger & Loken, 2010);
• Provides "opportunities for deeper understanding and integration" (Gabelnick, MacGregor, Matthews & Smith, 1990, p. 19);
• Supports shared knowledge, shared knowing, and shared responsibility (Tinto, 2003, p. 2); and
• "Gives students a sense of belonging" and "Provides a network of support and collaboration" (McGee & Reis, 2012, p. 16).

Why Should We (Show That We) Care?

As humans, we are wired to crave connection. However, when a person feels threatened socially or psychologically, their brain triggers the release of chemicals that cause one to disconnect. Culturally responsive teachers understand that caring is a powerful source of communication. Geneva Gay (2010) argues that teachers who genuinely care for their students' success will work tenaciously to ensure it. 

• Caring is attending to person and performance. Teachers model personal values such as patience, persistence and responsibility while incorporating skills such as self-determination throughout their curriculum.  "In other words, culturally responsive caring teachers cultivate efficacy and agency in ethnically diverse students" (p. 64).
• Caring is action-provoking. It is not dumbing down rigor. To the contrary, caring teachers demonstrate respect for students, provide choices and work to ensure information is taught in an understandable manner. In an online course, a teacher might take time to develop a template for students to assist them with creating an outline; record a video to demonstrate how to complete an assignment; provide model papers for students to consider in advance; organize complex projects into stages with clear deliverables; provide low-stake, formative assessments that foster confidence in students and scaffold their learning towards a summative assessment.
• Caring Prompts Effort and Achievement. Tell your story...of struggle, failure, success, or achievement. Neuroscience shows that when a person listens to another person tell a story, similar parts of the listener and speakers brains are activated. This process, known as neural coupling, demonstrates that story-telling builds empathy. Designing assignments that provide students with the option to reflect on their life experiences can improve cognitive understanding between the students and the instructor. Let them know they are not alone in their learning process and demonstrate the importance of applying a growth mindset--that is, "the understanding that abilities and intelligence can be developed" (Dweck, 2007).
• Caring is multidimensional responsiveness. Caring is a process. When teachers are committed, competent, confident and knowledgeable about the content in cultural pluralism, they are placed "... in an ethical, emotional and academic partnership with ethnically diverse students.  This partnership is anchored in respect, honor, integrity, resource-sharing, and a deep belief in the possibility of transcendence, that is, an unequivocal belief that marginalized students not only can but will improve their school achievement under the tutelage of competent and committed teachers who act to ensure that this happens" (p. 69). 

With these core values of caring, your partnership with your students can promote purpose in learning and even living.  

---OETraining - E8:Connection & Belonging - CC

Monitor course activity for potential bias, microaggressions, and/or stereotypes that make it uncomfortable for some students to engage or feel a sense of belonging. By keeping these suggestions in mind, they work together to help empower all students and build community.

Pay equal attention to all students

• A recent Stanford study found that online teachers show bias in discussions by replying more often to students who are likely to be white men than to other students, based on student names (Baker, Dee, Evans & John, 2018). These results mirror those from a study of instructor response rates to graduate student requests for mentoring, again based on student names (Milkman, Akinola & Chugh, 2014).
  • If your class is large enough that you cannot reply to every student in each discussion, then reply to a certain percentage each time (e.g., 10-20%). For example, in a class of fifty students, reply to at least five to ten different students in each discussion, starting with students who have not yet received replies from any other students. Create a list or spreadsheet to track how many times you reply to each student over the entire length of your class.
  • Or, use a classroom-based strategy in which you keep an index card for each student in a pile. For each discussion, reply to the top five names from the stack, note the date and discussion on those cards, and put them on the bottom of the stack. Once you get to the bottom of the stack, you can keep the same order or shuffle them and start again. When you notice a student has not posted a discussion yet, send them a quick note saying that you are looking forward to seeing their post.

Discuss bias with your students 

• Share the aforementioned Stanford study with your students at the beginning of the semester. Ask them for their impressions such as:
  • Have they experienced bias in class before? What did that look like?
  • What are their ideas for how the teacher might manage her bias?
  • What are their ideas for mitigating their own biases in their responses to peers in the class?
• Have students also take the IAT Test. Have them reflect on their results together such as:
  • What did they learn about their own biases?
  • Why is it important to be aware of these biases both in academic settings and in the real world?
  • What are some ways they can work to manage their biases?

Additional Annotations on Fostering an Inclusive Community and Identifying Human Bias

Foster an inclusive community and model the importance of identifying human biases in ourselves, and empower students to do the same

Identify bias together in course materials

• Ask students to examine the course materials and point out any biases they notice.
• Research the  most prominent people in the field and notice if bias exists.
• Counter the biases by highlighting the work of people from marginalized groups.

Cultural Bias & Interaction Bias

It's also important to consider the effects of bias on student success. Educators have been identifying and addressing cultural bias in various aspects of education for years.  For example, cultural bias can show up in course design, such as in instructions that use confusing language (Milheim, 2014) or examples of course concepts (e.g., using an expensive hobby like scuba diving to describe pressure change in physics); or testing, such as how test questions are worded (Kruse, 2016). On a related note, there is a common phenomenon known as "test bias" in which researchers have proven that IQ tests will be biased against minoritized students as the language and situations on tests that are more familiar to middle-class white students (Zhao, 2009).

Interaction bias can take place in online discussions, including if and how the instructor replies to different students (Baker, Dee, Evans & John, 2018); In the Baker, Dee, Evans & John study through Stanford University, they determined that instructors were 94% more likely to respond to students with "white and male" sounding names in online discussions.

---OETraining - E8:Connection & Belonging - CC

How to Manage Human Bias

Whether we are aware of it or not, our behavior as teachers is affected by unconscious attitudes, stereotypes, assumptions and biases. For example, "instructors may assume that students know to seek help when they are struggling" (Yale CTL, n.d.). This bias applies to all students, but other biases tied to students' identities can be equally if not more dangerous, such as assuming that students from specific ethnicity groups will be underprepared. As a teacher of an online or hybrid class, you may have to look at unconscious bias in a different light. Here are a couple of initial steps you can take to address unconscious bias:

• Read (and think) more about implicit bias: In his article on the implicit biases, David Gooblar (2017) summarized different articles and workshops on this topic and outlined a few strategies to get started. Yale's Center for Teaching and Learning (n.d.) shares examples of common implicit biases. Consider which of these apply to an online or hybrid course. For example, since you may never see your students in person, which biases may not emerge? Which biases might be stronger? Are there activities that you assume students cannot do as well online, so you avoid assigning them?
• Assess your own potential biases: Start with an Implicit Association Test (IAT).  For example, if you teach an online or hybrid course in the sciences, you might choose the Gender-Science IAT. Reflect on the results and start an internal dialogue—if you do not agree with or are surprised by the results, ask yourself what conclusions you can draw honestly and how you can become more aware of potential biases related to your students. Some faculty identify approaches to perform anonymous grading as well.
• Learn more about biases and "blind spots": The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University has posted an Implicit Bias Module Series. While it was created originally for K-12 educators, they are worth reviewing. Also, Price Waterhouse Cooper has posted a series of videos about unconscious biases. While their perspective is not focused on education, they do a good job outlining the issues. Take a look!

Find opportunities to re-communicate the purpose of the learning activities and how they relate to the real world or upcoming course activities.  This can be done by sharing context before or after learning materials, inviting student reflection, posting announcements or creating brief videos that help provide an overview of what is ahead and how the activities connect with the overall course or module level objectives.

Constructive

Feedback should help students build upon what they already know, meeting them where they are at and helping them to move closer towards the course goals.

Meaningful

Copy and pasting of feedback can be very helpful for instructors when the same message is shared multiple times. However, ensure that the feedback makes sense for that particular student in their situation.

Personalized

By personalizing the feedback through using examples from the students work, it helps to ensure the individualized feedback is custom to each learner as much as possible.

Timely

When grading assignments, try to do so within 48 hours.  Students often desire to review their work and feedback before continuing to the next step so prompt grading and feedback is very helpful.

Connected to existing criteria for success

Feedback and grades should not come as a surprise to students. Connecting feedback to existing criteria for success (which can be communicated in multiple ways) helps reduce confusion and miscommunication around assignments and expectations.

Rubrics

Canvas has a rubrics tool which can help make grading easy. Consider using the Rubric Generator to create rubrics for discussions, assignments, and projects. The actual creation within Canvas is a simple process but your ID can support you in setting it up for you once you’ve determined the criteria, levels, and points.

Assignment Instructions

Detailed assignment instructions can help learners navigate the activity more easily and focus on the educational task instead of the assignment navigation.

Reminders

Post announcement reminders that emphasize critical criteria or provide additional details around elements where students may struggle. This can be especially helpful prior to quizzes, exams, or when important projects are due.

Additional recommendations related to feedback are available within the 10 Minutes for Excellence module on Providing Student Feedback.

It’s important to find a nice balance when facilitating discussion forums. If you post too little, students will presume that you are not interested or engaged in the discussion forum. If you post too much, you can stifle the authentic conversations that otherwise may exist.  The best approach is to typically sprinkle posts occasionally within the discussion forums, using a friendly tone that helps draw out student perspectives and encourages students to dialogue further. Other examples of actively facilitating discussions include:

• Define your role in discussions. Use Announcements, discussion Instructions, and discussion posts to share with your students when they can expect posts and replies from you in discussions. Use your discussion posts to model the language, tone, and the type of responses that you would like from students.
• Help students develop good discussion habits by providing feedback during the discussions through posts,  announcements, and gradebook.
• Additional examples are shared within the 10 Minutes for Excellence module on Increasing Interaction.

Group work can be amazing. However, they can also be a point of frustration for students if the expectations are not clear. Students should be provided with a clear outline of their roles in the group early on along with a mechanism for connecting with the instructor if members of a group are not participating. Keep in mind that timelines and deadlines must be clear and also considerate of the time it takes to create something as a group. Also provide several options for students to be able to connect and communicate. The more flexible you can be in that area and the more you can set up for success by considering time zones, project roles, and ways to communicate, the more likely you’ll be able to create an environment where they can create as a group. Throughout the course, consider other ways you can provide continued guidance to students on working effectively in groups:

• Provide group and individual feedback on participation as well as performance.
• Address and provide resources for common teamwork problems in groups as they arise.
• Actively check in with student groups using email, Canvas, or other communication tools.

Be clear the roles and expectations for each member of a group. You may provide opportunities for group members to rate each other and have a mechanism in place to account for when group members are not participating. You may also want to consider using team management tools to ensure accountability. For example, tools like Ensightful ensure accountability and track student participation and interaction with group members.

The Grades area provides a dashboard view of student progress.  You can review the columns of graded work to identify which students may be struggling and which elements of the course are areas where students may need additional support. You can also see when students have recently logged onto the course in the People area, and Canvas offers various individual and class analytics.

Once you’ve identified struggling or inactive students, it’s important to reach out to them early on to see what is going on and whether they need additional support. The Message Students Who function in the Grades area is a great tool to send targeted messages to students who are falling behind or scoring low on certain assignments.  You can also encourage students to connect with their Success Coach or recommend additional services for their use.

The Office of the University Provost asks that faculty submit Academic Status Reports (ASRs) for the first few weeks of the course, especially for students who are not submitting assignments. You may review the faculty guide to ASRs here.

Consider different ways of collecting knowledge about students that can inform how you teach and the resources, materials, and approaches you select to engage and teach students. There are a variety of research-based recommendations related to using information about students to inform your teaching. Also, this Edutopia article “3 Ways Student Data Can Inform Your Teaching” provides a few additional recommendations.  

After the term begins, online courses tend to be more inflexible than face-to-face classes, but information on your students can be valuable to inform supplemental resources, or revisions for a future term.  Instructional adaptations in the active term may include pacing, additional explanations or examples, FAQs, addressing common misconceptions, more or less flexibility on assignments, or new avenues for major projects.

Teaching roles may include: 

• Synthesizer - One who synthesizes diverse viewpoints
• Moderator - Acts as a neutral participant and tries to keep participants on topic
• Challenger - Presents opportunities to re-assess viewpoints and perspectives, encouraging students to review and provide obstacles to attempt to achieve a specific learning outcome.
• Commentator - Presents insights and perspectives related to the topics discussed

Even though students are ultimately responsible for their own learning, the roles we assume as instructors are critical in guiding students’ thinking and behavior. We can take on a variety of roles in our teaching (e.g., synthesizer, moderator, challenger, commentator). These roles should be chosen in service of the learning objectives and in support of the instructional activities.  For example, if the objective is for students to be able to analyze arguments from a case or written text, the most productive instructor role might be to frame, guide and moderate a discussion.  If the objective is to help students learn to defend their positions or creative choices as they present their work, our role might be to challenge them to explain their decisions and consider alternative perspectives. Such roles may be constant or variable across the semester depending on the learning objectives.

Teaching Improvement Guide - Center for Advancing Teaching & Learning  U of Wisconsin-La Crosse

Teaching Principles - Eberly Center Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation, Carnegie Mellon University

ASU students are incredibly diverse. By enhancing course materials and making them more accessible and inclusive, all students benefit no matter their ability or global perspective.

Accessibility

Review Faculty Resources for Accessible Media Essentials (FRAME), the accessibility resource guide for all faculty at ASU, and consider ways to design accessible content as your build your course. The FRAME webpage identifies the ASU tools by action, looking at document accessibility within Microsoft and Google Workspaces, video and media content, tools in the Learning Management System, and more. Each tool supports a different aspect of accessible course design and is available for use within your ASU course. Start with the tools that align best with your course content.

• Check your Canvas content with the Canvas Accessibility Checker to identify issues with text, images, and layout for your Canvas pages (not files or videos).
• Ensure video and audio accessibility by leveraging MediaPlus for captioning and transcription.
• Collaborate with the ASU Library through the Library Resource Organizer to ensure your course materials are accessible, affordable, and easy for students to locate.
• Remediate inaccessible PDFs using Equidox, a tool designed to convert complex or scanned documents into accessible formats.
• Create screen reader–friendly STEM content using Equatio, which supports digital math, logic, and scientific notation.
• Enable live transcription and captions during your Zoom session to enhance accessibility. Share materials in advance and follow inclusive engagement practices to support all participants in real time.

Global Audience Inclusivity

Review your course content with a global lens. With our global student population increasing and our focus on creating educational experiences that are rooted in our mission of inclusion, it’s important that we are looking for cultural sensitivities that may make it harder for some learners to engage with the course or course content. Things like idioms, references to pop-culture, culturally or geographically bound examples, or potentially offensive examples can negatively impact our learners, especially those who are in a global audience.

You can also review textbook(s), articles and other course material and make sure that they are authored by people who represent a diverse group of races, socioeconomic backgrounds, religions, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, veteran status, nationality and intellectual perspective. This notion also applies to the images and examples that are used in the course. Examine where you might have blind spots or implicit biases that shape the content, assignments, and activities that your learner’s engage with. Give deliberate energy to creating learning experiences where our diverse group of learner’s are represented. The degree to which our diverse student body sees themselves in our courses significantly impacts their educational experience. 

How can image and representation bias affect online learners? Collins and Hebert (2008) shared that "our self-esteem, social judgment of others, and even our ability to recall information can be affected by images." Enough exposure to biased images and media may lead to stereotype threat--i.e., students may negatively evaluate themselves, their academic abilities, and even their career choices and life goals.

The American Psychological Association (2006) found that stereotype threat scenarios can "wreak havoc with test performance" (para. 1). The language we use in our course, the imagery in our course, and the interaction we foster among students and between ourselves and students, should be guided by equity and culturally responsive principles. (From "Revisiting Bias, Microaggressions and Stereotypes" - Unit 4, Equity and Culturally Responsive Teaching by @ONE)

Additional Annotations on 5.5

Regularly review course material for inclusive practices, language, and content. Ensure your course is accessibility  compliant and supports equitable opportunities for all students

Why Images & Representation Matter

Representation matters--for example, when we turn on the news, black and brown people are often misrepresented. A cursory glance at the most recent headlines will often include a recent story about a marginalized person being wrongfully treated by law enforcement or experiencing discrimination in some form. Discrimination may be against people of color, people with disabilities, people with unique religious or political views, and people who are queer. Representation provides opportunities for minoritized people to find community support and validation.

When we consider equitable practices in online education, one way we can do that is by including a diverse array of images within our course design. Subtle communication of inclusion is key to improving the landscape within education and the workforce alike. It is no small task either, it is major. To include a Black student studying, for example, serves to counter the many images of Black students not studying. Statistics citing the burgeoning amount of Black men being expelled from school and incarcerated point to how misrepresentation impacts educators.

Action: Ways to Make Positive Change

There’s been a long-withstanding misrepresentation of marginalized populations in academia. Now, we’re at a time of building awareness and making change.

---Adapted from OETraining - E8:Connection & Belonging - CC

Monitor course activity for potential bias, microaggressions, and/or stereotypes that make it uncomfortable for some students to engage or feel a sense of belonging.

Pay equal attention to all students

• A Stanford study found that online teachers show bias in discussions by replying more often to students who are likely to be white men than to other students, based on student names (Baker, Dee, Evans & John, 2018). These results mirror those from a study of instructor response rates to graduate student requests for mentoring, again based on student names (Milkman, Akinola & Chugh, 2014).
  • If your class is large enough that you cannot reply to every student in each discussion, then reply to a certain percentage each time (e.g., 10-20%). For example, in a class of fifty students, reply to at least five to ten different students in each discussion, starting with students who have not yet received replies from any other students. Create a list or spreadsheet to track how many times you reply to each student over the entire length of your class.
  • Or, use a classroom-based strategy in which you keep an index card for each student in a pile. For each discussion, reply to the top five names from the stack, note the date and discussion on those cards, and put them on the bottom of the stack. Once you get to the bottom of the stack, you can keep the same order or shuffle them and start again. When you notice a student has not posted a discussion yet, send them a quick note saying that you are looking forward to seeing their post.

Discuss bias with your students 

• Share the aforementioned Stanford study with your students at the beginning of the semester. Ask them for their impressions such as:
  • Have they experienced bias in class before? What did that look like?
  • What are their ideas for how the teacher might manage her bias?
  • What are their ideas for mitigating their own biases in their responses to peers in the class?
• Have students also take the IAT Test. Have them reflect on their results together such as:
  • What did they learn about their own biases?
  • Why is it important to be aware of these biases both in academic settings and in the real world?
  • What are some ways they can work to manage their biases?
• Create and share a statement to students that addresses directly that there are some sensitive topics covered in course that reflect negative stereotypes, basis, etc., that could cause a student to feel a lack of belonging. Statement should address how and why this topic is important to the course and what the faculty is doing throughout the course to create a safe space for students to engage with difficult topics.

An understanding of basic computer use,Internet browsers, downloading, saving files, and using programs like Word or Powerpoint or other common applications is important when teaching online. The Learning Experience Design Team offers a variety of workshops and webinars. The EdPlus Digital Learning Team offers Master Class for Teaching in Digital Learning Environments and Quality Matters training.

By learning to use Canvas effectively, it will make teaching online much more efficient and effective. Canvas provides several resources available to faculty who are new to teaching using Canvas including:

• Canvas provides a wealth of online resources, including the Canvas Instructor Guide.

A variety of tutorial videos and resources are also available through the Learning Experience Design Resource Library.

Become familiar with the different resources available. Review the Orientation to ASU Online, which will walk you through the different support resources available for faculty teaching or developing o-courses that are part of the fully online degree program, which includes:

• ASU Live Chat or ASU Help
  Contact the ASU Help Center for 24/7 assistance with your courses.
• EdPlus Digital Learning team support for instructional design, quality assurance, faculty support, and media service support
• ASU Librarians can assist with reading lists, copyright, open educational resources, and more.

Student Accessibility and Inclusive Learning Services can also assist and will occasionally reach out to faculty when students are identified that may need accommodations.

According to Cornell University, digital literacy is “the ability to find, evaluate, utilize, share, and create content using information technologies…” Digital literacy is no longer confined to the books students can hold within their hands.

Help students learn to navigate tools and resources to expand their knowledge. 7 Ways to teach digital literacy are listed in this informED article:

• Emphasis the importance of critical thinking
• Use social media for learning and collaboration
• Provide guidance on how to avoid plagiarism
• Teach students to manage their online identity
• Help students manage digital distractions
• Provide authentic contexts for practice
• Guide students out of their comfort zone

Virginia Tech has also developed an extensive Guide to Digital Literacy.

Visit our Digital Competency 10-minute to excellence module for more information.