(Re)Designing Online Learning
Abstract
This book provides a roadmap for redesigning online learning within an equity-based pedagogical framework. Equity-based pedagogy is beneficial for fostering deeper learning and empowering students, particularly those belonging to marginalized groups. Attention is paid to how online tools and instructional environments interact with the unique experiences, strengths, and needs of students with the goal of identifying and interrogating existing educational norms and practices in need of redesign. The Culturally Sustaining Authentic Work (CSAW) is introduced as an integrated, equity-based framework for online learning that spans disciplines and connects micro instructional practices to macro societal norms, institutions, and policies. Strategies for integrating CSAW include delegating lower-order learning tasks and responsibilities to technology-based tools, leveraging transformational technology-assisted instructional strategies, expanding the learning community and what counts as learning, developing a community of learners online, supporting teachers in humanizing their teaching online, and developing local systems to enact structural transformations. Redesigning online learning within an equity-based pedagogical framework has the potential to humanize education, improving students’ sense of belonging, agency, and learning in the classroom. At the same time, the strategies detailed in this book provide a framework for transforming macro societal structures and goals around educational excellence and equity in the digital age.