The surge in enrollment for online courses is continually increasing. However, beneath the convenience lies a challenge that demands a resolution. Educators, administrators, and instructional designers must ensure that the human element is not lost in the virtual corridors of learning. Students with diverse backgrounds and learning needs require more than a simple virtual classroom. Research reveals a concerning trend: high attrition rates in online courses, often attributed to a lack of engagement and insufficient human interaction. To reverse this trend, deliberate measures must be taken to humanize the online learning environment. This book provides several solutions, offering an array of tools and strategies to promote engagement and infuse the human touch into online spaces. To confront this multi-layered challenge, it becomes paramount to undertake deliberate measures aimed at humanizing the online learning environment. Humanizing Online Teaching and Learning in Higher Education steps forward as a guide, offering an extensive array of tools and strategies meticulously crafted to foster student engagement and infuse the essential human touch into the digital educational landscape.

The rapid shift to online learning, accelerated by the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, has brought both convenience and unforeseen hurdles. Despite the appeal of flexible education, the attrition rates in online courses remain persistently higher than in traditional face-to-face counterparts. This escalating issue impacts individual students and threatens the stability of entire learning institutions. The imminent need for a comprehensive solution to address the root causes of high attrition rates has never been more critical. Incorporating the Human Element in Online Teaching and Learning, meticulously crafted for college professors, researchers, graduate students, policymakers, instructional designers, and college administrators, provides a comprehensive roadmap for mitigating the attrition crisis in online education. The book equips educators with culturally responsive pedagogical practices by addressing the critical need for humanistic engagement in online courses, ensuring that online learning spaces become more inclusive and supportive. As a result, the strategies outlined in this book empower educators to create a sense of belonging for diverse student populations and offer a blueprint for colleges and universities to foster professional development opportunities. Ultimately, this transformative guide is a cornerstone in reshaping the online learning experience, ensuring that every student, regardless of background, can thrive in the digital classroom.

Distance learning is becoming increasingly prevalent in educational settings around the world as it provides more flexibility and access to classes for students and educators alike. While online classrooms are proving to be popular, there is a significant gap in the personalization and humanization of these courses. The Handbook of Research on Humanizing the Distance Learning Experience features empirical research on promoting the personalization of online learning courses through presence, emotionality, and interactivity within digital classrooms. Highlighting best practices and evaluating student perceptions on distance learning, this handbook will appeal to researchers, educators, course designers, professionals, and administrators.

"In some ways, shouldn′t we always be teaching from a distance?" Paul France asks this not as pitch for distance learning. But because part of the reason distance learning has been so challenging, Paul asserts, is that we’re replicating long-standing practices that promote dependent learning in our students. Why not use this unique moment of time to reconnect with the true purpose of teaching: to help our students become liberated learners and free thinkers? The next logical step in teachers’ months-long distance learning "journey," Humanizing Distance Learning describes how to center humanity and equity in our process of reimagining learning. Even while teaching and learning miles apart through screens, you’ll discover how to Build independence within your students so they’re better equipped to tackle challenges with persistence and learn how to learn Make collaboration and human connection essential components of your pedagogy, offering students the chance to socialize and learn from one another Center and unpack students’ identities, helping them develop a conscious knowledge of themselves, all the while using their self-identified strengths to overcome any obstacles Plan, prepare, and implement humanized instruction while teaching for student liberation—both digitally and in person. Investigate technology integration, including the Digital Divide, as well as ways to minimize EdTech integration so that our collective sense of humanity can continue to be front and center "The future," Paul writes, "may be unclear, the road may be rocky, and the story may continue to be long and winding as we push forward through this global crisis. But the answer will always be simple: We must teach and learn in pursuit of a deeper sense of collective humanity—and for no other reason." "This book is equal parts visionary and practical, courageous and invitational. It addresses foundational needs and wrenching challenges teachers faced during the recent time when U.S. teachers abruptly found themselves teaching remotely. . . . It is a deeply humanizing book." ~Carol Ann Tomlinson, William Clay Parrish, Jr. Professor Emeritus, University of Virginia "Humanizing Distance Learning is a book for our times not only because it addresses how to build a culture of thinking and teach for understanding at a distance, but also because it challenges the status quo of education by offering a more liberated and humane vision." ~Ron Ritchhart, Senior Research Associate, Harvard Graduate School of Education "Paul France has produced a timely and necessary book that will help educators humanize distance learning. Recognizing incredible dimensions of complexity, this book will surely help educators traverse times of uncertainty in distance learning." ~H. Richard Milner IV, Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair of Education, Vanderbilt University

The book is a collection of chapters written by the participants of a free open course on the Canvas Open Network entitled Humanizing Online Instruction. In the course, a variety of methods for increasing presence in online courses were shared in this multi-institutional, international, online professional learning opportunity.

By highlighting the use of emerging technologies in pedagogy and drawing on real-life case studies, the authors in this volume address the ongoing debate that technology brings a positive effect on education and beyond. They demonstrate how technology continues to fulfil the challenges of creating a more democratic educational environment.

By highlighting the use of emerging technologies in pedagogy and drawing on real-life case studies, the authors in this volume address the ongoing debate that technology brings a positive effect on education and beyond. They demonstrate how technology continues to fulfil the challenges of creating a more democratic educational environment.

Global challenges, in a chaotic context, are ever in play, emerging and receding in time. At the present moment, the global challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in several years of mass-scale challenges and lost learning and socialization from K-12 to higher education for many. The pandemic has been a high consequence and continuing event. Universities and colleges have been under unprecedented budgetary strain. Despite all the immense and irreparable human losses, humanity is moving forward with lessons from the past several years. The Handbook of Research on Revisioning and Reconstructing Higher Education After Global Crises explores how global higher education will recover from the global pandemic at the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels, and how they will re-establish their relevance for teaching and learning, research and innovation, and social contributions. Covering topics such as campus life, online library services, and Indigenous students, this major reference work is an essential resource for educators and administrators of higher education, government officials, students of higher education, librarians, researchers, and academicians.

The SAGE Handbook of Online Higher Education presents a cutting-edge collection of 50 essays that explores the rapidly evolving landscape of online teaching and learning in higher education. Assembled and contributed by a team of leading experts, the Handbook adopts a uniquely holistic approach to examining the needs of online education. Chapters bring together voices from diverse and international backgrounds to provide insights applicable to a broad range of contexts, and present practical strategies for planning, delivering quality online higher education. The handbook covers a wide range of topics, including online pedagogy, instructional design, student engagement, technological innovation, assessment, leadership, and the developing role of online education in the context of broader societal and cultural shifts. The SAGE Handbook of Online Higher Education is an essential resource for educators, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners who seek to understand and shape the future of higher education in the digital age. Section 1: Fundamentals of Online Education Section 2: Online Education Around the World Section 3: Online Instructional Design Section 4: Online Instructional Delivery Section 5: Instructional Technology for Online Education Section 6: Online Education Administration and Management Section 7: Student Support Services

Effective Online Teaching is an essential resource that offers a clear understanding of how cognition and learning theory applies to online learning. This much-needed resource provides specific strategies for incorporating this knowledge into effective learner-centered teaching that gets results. The book includes strategies on motivation, tailored instruction, interaction, collaboration, monitoring and communication, time and information management, student concerns, and legal and ethical issues. Designed as a text for online instructors, the chapters can be used for self-directed learning or in a formal training setting in concert with the companion Training Manual and CD. "Tina Stavredes has done something sorely needed in the online teaching world she has successfully combined solid theory and research with the practical application of instructor training. Both the book and the training manual are a 'must' for any online education organization. Bravo!" Dr. Darcy W. Hardy, assistant vice provost for Technology Education Initiatives, University of Texas at San Antonio, and chair emerita, United States Distance Learning Association "Drawing from years of experience and solidly grounded in an understanding of the adult learner and learning, Stavredes offers dozens of helpful instructor strategies, activities, and resources to support adult learners' success in an online environment. Effective Online Teaching and its accompanying training manual is a 'must-have' set for online instructors in higher education, corporate, and government settings." Sharan B. Merriam, professor emeritus of adult education, University of Georgia, and coauthor, Learning in Adulthood "An eminently practical book that provides clear and unpretentious explanations of the learning theories that are essential knowledge for every online teacher, together with equally uncluttered and easy-to-follow guidance about how to apply this knowledge to achieve excellent teaching." Michael Grahame Moore, Distinguished Professor of Education, The Pennsylvania State University, and editor, The American Journal of Distance Education