Humanities Teaching Online

Is this the first time you are teaching online, be it hybrid or fully online? If so, the best approach you can take when converting a reading-intensive, writing-intensive humanities-based course from a face-to-face format to online is to start planning your course design early…and ask for advice, recommendations, and perhaps most importantly, teaching “fails” from friends and colleagues who have experience with online pedagogy and whom your respect as teachers. Why the “fails”? Well, teaching online for the first time is much like teaching in your first classroom when your get your first real academic job as a newly minted Ph.D. It is an incredibly humbling experience…especially if you consider yourself an effective and dynamic classroom teacher. There will be times when you feel like a total failure with all the anxiety you had during your first year of teaching in your own classroom. Yet most of the mistakes you will make (and you will make them, I assure you!) will be the same ones that other instructors have made before you.

Here are some words of advice from someone who has been there:

Be kind to yourself and forgive yourself as you teach online for the first time.
When I first taught online, I had a particular course that made me totally miserable. I had made poor design choices for the online format and tried to incorporate too much new technology – most of which did not work as anticipated (or at all!). I lamented my situation to a colleague and, almost in tears, described the online course as a major teaching fail for me. I was incredibly anxious each time I signed into the course site, the students seemed to hate me, and I would wake up every night fretting about the situation and unable to fall back asleep. My colleague just looked at me and said, “Tamara…even on your worst teaching day, you are a better teacher than many people we know!” Try and keep that sort of observation in mind as you stumble teaching online for the first time. And if you make a mistake, be honest and just tell your students what happened and how you will fix it. If you keep your students informed, most of them will be very understanding.

Your online course does not have to be complicated or employ cutting-edge technology to be an effective and very positive learning experience for your students as long as your pedagogy is thoughtful and remains the primary focus of the course.
Before you start looking at any technology, online resources, etc. for teaching online, spend at least a week or more figuring out your pedagogy first. What are your learning objectives for the course? What are the university’s learning objectives for the course (if you have those)? How are your going to align these objectives with the assignments? Often simpler is better, especially when you first begin teaching online. A good example is using the Discussion feature in Canvas or Discussion Board in Blackboard. The Discussion or Discussion Board in a learning module system is a very straightforward tool, and faculty who teach online always strongly recommend it to new online instructors. However, an online discussion is only as good as the prompt you design, especially when your students are exclusively online. I may come into my face-to-face classroom and begin class discussion by asking students what, in the reading assigned for that day, interested them or confused them. Then I can respond immediately to their comments, which are usually tentative and unsure to start, and tease out the discussion over the entire class period, directing the focus to what topics appear to interest the students or I believe we need to cover. I love that sort of spontaneous discussion, but it is really hard (if not impossible) to achieve in an online course. Online, my discussion prompt cannot be vague. I need to be much more specific in terms of what I want them to discuss. And I need to make those discussions an activity, if possible, rather than just a simple response.

The following bulleted list will help you get started thinking about teaching online in the humanities:

Now you can move on to exploring possible resources and tools for building an effective and engaging online course for your students.

HyFlex/BlendFlex Teaching

HyFlex (also known as BlendFlex) is a course design model that offers both synchronous and asynchronous learning experiences. Typically, this flexible course structure allows students to attend f2f classes, participate online, or do both depending on their schedules and needs. This synchronous/asynchronous format can also be completely online. The only requirement is that the synchronous class meeting, whether in the classroom or virtual, is recorded so that absent students may watch it on their own time. Students are able to choose how they attend the course based on their weekly schedule, the course topic covered that particular week, or instructional need.

Transparent (Backward) Instruction & Assignment Design

As I mention on the homepage for this website, I have been a certified Quality Matters reviewer since 2010 and reviewed humanities-based online courses at both the college/university and high school levels. The Quality Matters Higher Education Rubric (6th edition) is a set of 8 General Standards and 42 Specific Review Standards set out by Quality Matters that are used to evaluate the design of online and blended courses and programs across the US and Canada. These standards require that the instructional materials you provide in your online course directly connect with the course objectives. The most effective way to achieve this alignment is with transparent assignment design, also known as backward design — a teaching practice that clearly communicates the purpose, task and criteria of student assignments.

I strongly encourage anyone teaching online to use such design for all assignments in their courses. Transparent instruction and design will result in much more meaningful and effective pedagogy in your courses. And, perhaps most importantly, students will better understand why they have to complete particular assignments and, as a result, send fewer emails asking you for clarification.

General Resources for Humanities-Based Courses

When I first started teaching online, I tried to make all my own course materials, especially anything visual, audio, or video. In a way, I had to do so because online educational resources for humanities-based courses were not nearly as plentiful and robust as they are today, nor were the tools offered by the learning module system (an earlier incarnation of today’s BlackBoard) particularly useful for reading-intensive writing-intensive courses. However, I quickly learned that my creating…or trying to create…everything I wanted or “envisioned” for my courses was ridiculously labor intensive and not necessarily all that successful. And because I was the author of these materials, I felt obligated to update and even recreate them for subsequent courses in an effort to make them “perfect.”

Don’t do this, especially if this semester is the first time teaching online or hybrid. There are lots of digital repositories now that curate online instructional resources for the humanities, many of which are very high quality and all of which have the required permissions for use in education. I strongly recommend that you start looking for pre-existing digital content, especially in the form of visuals and audio (images, video, etc.), that you can use in your courses. My only caveat is to spend the time to review and evaluate the pre-made resources you select with a critical eye. How do you think your students will respond to them? How do you respond to them? Are they too simple or too complex? Are they too long or just plain boring? Keep in mind that most people in an online course cannot watch/listen to videos longer than 10 to 12 minutes at time. Any longer and they lose interest and/or become distracted.

Humanities Open Book Program

  • Northwestern Open: online platform providing open access to previously out-of-print titles published by Northwestern University Press
  • Open Textbook Library: textbooks licensed by authors and publishers to be freely used and adapted
  • OpenStax: a nonprofit educational technology initiative based at Rice University that has created peer-reviewed, openly-licensed textbooks available in free digital formats and low-cost print
  • BCCampus:
  • Open Access on MUSE: open access books and journals from several university presses and scholarly societies
  • ACLS Humanities E-Book: open access digital editions of titles that are currently out-of-print from a range of different sources and rights holders

Online Tools Beyond the LMS

In addition to my university’s learning module system tools, I also use the ones listed below with students and for my own research. I am particularly fond of the free online scheduler YouCanBook.Me and have used it very successfully for the past 5 years. Having students book online appointments themselves significantly cuts down on email correspondence — a highly desired reduction when teaching online.

I have used both Slack and Trello for research projects, including a textbook publication, very successfully. Trello, in particular, is an excellent collaborative space for a variety of projects…much better than what a learning module system offers for group work…but there is a learning curve for it. Depending on the assignment and the course, I have had students work on group projects with Trello. However, this summer, I have begun working with colleagues in MS Teams, which is part of my university’s MS Office 365 offerings to all faculty, students, and staff. MS Teams has replaced Skype (remember when all of us “skyped” rather than “zoomed”?) and offers many of the features I like best about Slack and Trello in combination. Consequently, I plan to use MS Teams for group projects in my courses as of this fall. And, like Slack and Trello, MS Teams is used in the workplace, so my students can list it on their résumés as a “computer skill.”

Both PinUp and WeVu are new tools for me and look extremely promising for teaching online. I plan to use the Basic subscription (free) PinUp boards for my virtual office hours in some of my fall online courses. If it is proves as effective as I hope, I may actually purchase the Professional subscription ($50 USD per year) of PinUp in order to have more digital boards and options. WeVu offers a very interesting approach to teaching online in terms of active learning. Although you can have a single site for free, there is a low subscription fee for the semester or year if you want your students to be the creators of their own sites on which you will comment.

  • YouCanBook.Me: a free online scheduler that allows students (and others) to book appointments online with you; synchs will Outlook and Google calendars
  • Pinup: a free digital “corkboard” collaboration tool that allows you to pin virtual “sticky notes,” upload a document or image, download from Dropbox, and import videos; it has a text chat feature, but if you share your Pinup virtual board in Zoom, you can have audio
  • Slack: provides free dedicated digital spaces (called channels) for highly organized online communication (internet relay chat) and project management
  • Trello: a free web-based, Kanban-style, list-making project management tool
  • MS Teams: an online collaboration platform that combines chat, video, file storage, and application integration; generally available via MS Office 365
  • Miro: free digital whiteboard for collaboration
  • Padlet: real-time collaborative web platform for uploading, organizing, and sharing content to virtual bulletin board called “padlet;” since the pandemic, requires a subscription
  • Perusall: a social annotation tool that allows for peer-to-peer collaborative reading and annotation; students can then annotate readings and asynchronously respond to each other’s comments and questions about assigned readings in context
  • Hypothes.is: another social annotation tool that allows for peer-to-peer collaborative reading and annotation; students can then annotate readings and asynchronously respond to each other’s comments and questions about assigned readings in context
  • WeVu: a web video platform that allows for time-specific comments for feedback and dialogue; focus is on active learning with students making the recording and instructors watching and giving feedback

Images

Audio

Screencasting

Anyone who teaches humanities-based courses typically likes to write…a lot. However, for a student taking an online or hybrid course, extensive text is tiring to read and ultimately non-engaging, Good course design in a learning module system requires a balance between text and visuals (images, video, etc.). One of the most effective tools for providing lectures, instructions, feedback, etc. is screencasting — that is, a video of data displayed on the screen of a computer or mobile device, typically with accompanying audio.

Without question, the “gold” standard of screencasting software is Camtasia, but it requires a pricey paid subscription. Unless your university pays for it, I really do not recommend paying for it yourself. And even if your university has a license/licence for Camtasia, I do not necessarily recommend it as a starting place for your first time screencasting. Camtasia is a powerful tool, but that means it also has a steep learning curve.

The other advantage of using free screencasting software for your recordings is that you can have your students use it for their own oral presentations. Many humanities majors do not see themselves (or, perhaps more importantly, do not hear or read themselves described by others) as particularly tech savvy or even tech literate. Teaching your students how to use such technology as screencasting software by modeling its application yourself and then requiring your students to use that same software in an assignment will provide them with a technology “skill” to list on their résumés and better prepare them for the 21st-century workplace.

Free Screencasting Software

  • Screencast-o-matic: a beginner-friendly screencasting tool that offers all the recording features that most people need, including basic video editing and enhancement options; Basic version is free, but Deluxe subscription plan is very inexpensive (less than $20 USD/year) and offers auto-closed captioning that you can edit; recordings limited to 15 minutes; Windows and Mac compatible; iOS mobile app available
  • Apowersoft: free version of this screencasting tool offers standard recording features as well as basic video editing capability; no restriction on length of video recordings (not necessarily a good feature from your students’ perspective!); Windows and Mac compatible; allows for screen capturing on Android and iOS
  • OBS Studio: open source screencasting tool offering advanced recording options and live streaming capabilities; allows user to preset video and audio configurations; popular among YouTube content creators; Windows, Mac, and Linux compatible
  • VoiceThread: a beginner-friendly interactive screencasting tool that allows viewers to navigate slides and leave comments as text or audio; Windows and Mac compatible; iOS and Android apps available but perform poorly (see reviews at App Store and Google Play)
  • Loom: a beginner-friendly interactive screencasting tool that allows users to leave comments as text, audio, or video; pro version free for educators and students as long as you register with a .edu email account; available as a Windows or Mac desktop app, iOS mobile app, and a Chrome extension
  • Flipgrid: video discussion tool with capabilities for sharing student responses through video; free for educators

Not-Free Screencasting Software

  • Camtasia: the most feature-rich screencasting tool currently available; includes impressive video editing software and a starter library of such elements as icons, motion graphics, music tracks, etc.; allows for the inclusion of quizzes and hotspots for greater interactivity; Windows and Mac compatible; relatively expensive with a steep learning curve
  • ScreenFlow: a powerful screencasting and video editing software; only Mac compatible; less expensive than Camtasia but still pricey

Microphones & Headsets

If you are going to purchase any technology for teaching online, I highly recommend buying a good quality microphone for recording your audio for screencasts, lectures, etc. I purchased a Blue Snowball over 10 years ago, and it still records at studio quality, It has a switch that allows me to reduce, if not eliminate, ambient noise when recording in my office or at home. Please note: the Blue Snowball is a side-address microphone. In other words, you must have the Blue Snowball at a sufficient height so that you speak into the front/side of the microphone rather than down from the top. MacBook Pro (USB-C) users will need the appropriate dongle/adapter.

I also highly recommend purchasing a headset with microphone to use for Zoom or MS Teams meetings and synchronous classes. Earbuds are not a good choice. A headset with microphone will eliminate audio feedback and ambient sound. Just be sure that you can connect it to your computer if it is not wireless. Again, MacBook Pro (USB-C) users will need the appropriate dongle/adapter.

Microphones for Recording Audio

Headsets with Microphone

  • Logitech headset with microphone: good quality product, whether USB connected or wireless
  • Newegg: this online retailer offers very good prices on technology products, so I recommend checking it before making a purchase through Amazon or Best Buy; it has been around for a while and is generally considered to be trustworthy and reliable as far as I can tell

Recording Video (short tutorials)

ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) Compliance

If you teach at a college or university in the US, your online courses must be ADA compliant because it is federal law. And if you teach outside the US, your online courses should be ADA compliant because it is the right thing to do!

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