Reclaiming the Humanizing Project

When we consider a feminist approach to humanizing our online teaching, we must first attend to its white male supremacist history. It was under the aegis of the humanist project that Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1979) first proposed a radically different program of education for white boys and girls, separating the Emiles from the Sophies. He was to be fully educated in the richness of the humanities, whereas she was to be trained as his wife and helpmate. Rousseau’s humanistic gender arrangements are a clear example of what María Lugones (2007) terms the “light” side of the modern/ colonialist gender system, which she argues was crucial to the establishment of European global power and the very idea of the “civilized” West. The civilized “light” side of heterosexist gender norms was defined over and against the “dark” side: that is, hypersexualized “savages.” This dichotomy laid the foundation for education as a project of “civilizing” the “savage” that has been a central tool of colonialist genocide, especially as historically practised in the abusive and murderous Indian residential school systems across the United States and Canada (Berenstain, 2020; Levitt et al., 2023; Pember, 2019). Today Black, brown, and Indigenous students continue to be disciplined at disproportionate rates, suffering at the hands of school resource officers and driven into the school-to-prison pipeline. Black girls are especially overdisciplined compared with white female peers (Crenshaw et al., 2015). Moreover, attempts to further humanize these civilizing practices can make disciplinary technologies more pernicious (Foucault, 1979).

Even when we account for the colonizing racist and heterosexist assumptions of the “human,” we can still falter. For example, struck by the racial disparity in his home city of Baltimore, John Rawls (1971) proposed a “veil of ignorance” in his “theory of justice” whereby moral judgments should be made solely based on principles derived as if we were without knowledge of our identities or other bias-inducing information about those involved. Despite his best efforts, his notion of justice replicates white male assumptions of who is part of our human community. As Eva Kittay (2020) has argued, though Rawls might anticipate accounting for the needs of children, the elderly, and the radically disabled in his imagined just society, his theory neglects the needs of those who take care of such populations (see Tong, 2002). He fails to care for the caretakers, who tend to be women. Indeed, a neutral human often presumes an abstracted masculinity that ignores the body, relegating it and its care to the “second sex” (Beauvoir, 2010).

Furthermore, as disability justice activist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna- Samarasinha (2020) reminds us, these (feminine) caretakers are often disabled themselves and in need of care. Writing about care workers involved in transformative justice advocacy, Piepzna-Samarasinha observes that many “are survivors with anxiety and CPTSD” often in addition to other disabilities, which both helps them in their work and exposes them to further harm (p. 234). Thus, they argue that centralizing disability is itself transformative. For example, “crip time” resists ableist temporality with “a ‘flexible approach to normative time frames.’ … ‘[R]ather than bend disabled bodies and minds to meet the clock, crip time bends the clock to meet disabled bodies and minds’” (Samuels, qtd. in Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2020, 245; Samuels, 2017; see also brown, 2017).

Along with exposure to systems of oppression, students and instructors alike are caretakers. We can be caretakers of children, the elderly, and people with disabilities in our capacities as both family members and workers, for example in group homes. Some can also be translators who must accompany non-English-speaking family members to the hospital. Not simply “charges” in need of care and access to university resources (i.e., counselling services, Title IX, etc.), students and faculty members are also caretakers of others. Thus, as we approach the question of humanizing the seemingly antihuman technological space of the online classroom, we must actively resist the normative assumptions of who our students are and who we, as instructors, are. Rather than take a “veil of ignorance” approach to crafting our policies and syllabi, we can promote listening actively to what our students, our colleagues, and we ourselves are telling us.

Reclaiming the idea of humanizing the academic environment for a feminist online pedagogy must follow three principles. First, we must recognize that our assumptions about the ideal student—both the “excellent student” and the “average student” whom we generally assume to be in our classrooms—are steeped in racialized, gendered, classed, and ableist notions. Second, we must be prepared to abandon course policies resembling a “carceral” approach, seeking to punish students for falling short of idealized behaviour (e.g., attendance policies, deadlines), in favour of approaches that privilege the care of embodied beings in the full ambiguity of their autonomy and dependency, students and faculty alike. Third, we must deny the assumption that the online environment structuring our classrooms is neutral. Indeed, everything from the code powering a learning management system (LMS) to user decisions and behaviours is infused with assumptions and biases that can threaten our intention to lead with care. We must remain critical of how online platforms structure our courses and student interactions, and we must be explicit about our decisions within these platforms, both to prevent our values and biases from donning a veil of neutrality and to assert our investment in a pedagogy of care.

Enacting a humanizing feminist pedagogy in an online environment carries with it the unique challenge of forging a humane space in a digital one. Simple yet wide-reaching changes to this environment are possible, we contend, through course policies that deliberately centre the embodied humanity of students and instructors. In his discussion of the opportunities and challenges for Indigenous pedagogy that values our connection to place within online classrooms that abstract from it, Jean-Paul Restoule (2019) emphasizes the importance of a relational approach that fosters community building within the online space. Specifically, he employs the five R’s as an ethos for all learners to engage Indigenous knowledges: respect, responsibility, relevance, reciprocity, and relationship (see also Kirkness & Barnhardt, 1991; Tessaro et al., 2018). What we suggest in designing particular course policies offers compatibility with this approach since we emphasize a relational feminist pedagogy of care.

Course policies govern the classroom, student-student interaction, and student-instructor interaction in profound ways and, unlike course content, can be adapted across disciplines, course levels, and modalities. By constructing humanizing policies, we contend that instructors can build a classroom environment in which a course—regardless of discipline or content—succeeds in enacting the goals of feminist pedagogy. In many ways, this effort represents an act of resistance to the structuring and disciplining powers of the academy in which students, instructors, and intellectuals more broadly are presumed to be fully of the mind and not concerned with the distractions of the body—largely presumed to be able bodied, affluent, white, and cis male (hooks, 1993). Primacy of the mind and erasure of the body can become even more pronounced in an online environment in which instructors and students are reduced to their names or simple digital avatars. Taking seriously the embodiment of those who make up an online classroom is a necessary process for humanizing this space.

In the following parts, we discuss common online course policies through the lens of the above principles and describe policies that we have used in our own courses. Although the policies that we discuss involve class elements that are ongoing throughout the semester, humanizing policies are also possible at the course level, such as a policy relevant to students who might find themselves failing the course midway through the semester. Students in this situation might be better off withdrawing from the course (a withdrawal might not affect a student’s GPA as dramatically as an F), though that might be difficult for them to see or accept. A feminist, humanizing policy would make explicit the implications of failing a course versus withdrawing from it. Its presence in a syllabus signals to students that they are not alone in finding themselves in this situation. A “failing grade” policy that includes “a talk to the instructor,” in person or over the phone or videoconference, allows the student and instructor to speak without the mediation and temporal distance of the LMS or an email. In making explicit the reasons for course policies, the workings of institutional mechanisms (e.g., the withdrawal deadline and others that might affect a student’s tuition bill), and the realities of how students might (or might not) succeed in a course, both students and instructors can reach a more humane status in the online classroom.

The policies that we discuss below were developed over time and adjusted to meet both the needs of students and the needs of instructors. We found that taking a feminist, humanizing approach to some of the main policies reduced our cognitive, logistical, and emotional labour while meaningfully transforming our interactions with students.

Late Policies

Policies that address late work are rich grounds for enacting a “crip time” ethic of care. In this part, we discuss late work policies in two ways: how “on time” and “late” are typically defined and function in an LMS environment and how instructors’ framing of “lateness” can expand or erase spaces for humanity.

Coursework has due dates, regardless of course modality. There are practical and pedagogical reasons for this. For example, a term occurs during particular dates, and students might need to learn certain ideas or skills at particular times to be able to learn other things at later times. The experience of the online class is altered once an instructor attaches a due date and time to a student action in an LMS, sometimes in useful ways. For example, an assigned due date might then be included on the LMS calendar and in system-generated notifications. In our experience, many students rely on these aspects of the LMS to view and keep track of their upcoming work. If instructors choose not to assign a due date, then system-generated sources of information are no longer available to students.

However, critical to the online context, there are fundamental temporal differences between the meaning of “on time” when a student turns in work in person and when a student turns in work through an LMS. Making these differences explicit enables us to see how the LMS treats students as less than human and points out the opportunities for developing policies that align better both with our embodied natures and with an ethic of care. When student work is handled through an LMS, the work is coded in binary fashion—as either late or not late—based on the minute (indeed, the second) that the assignment is successfully uploaded. Although the system might require that degree of precision because it is a machine and cannot handle ambiguity or make exceptions, we contend that it is also arbitrary, punitive, and treats students as parts of an automated system rather than as people with emotions and bodies.

During an in-person class, the due date and time of an assignment are often and easily linked to the day and time of a particular class meeting. Even when a due date and time are as precise as “the start of class” on a particular day, there is a liminal time when people are in the room together but the formal class activities have not yet begun. In an online asynchronous class, due dates and times have no physical anchor and allow for no ambiguity. Although they might be consistent from week to week, the choice of day and time, to a large degree, is arbitrary.

We argue that this aspect of an LMS is punitive because, if the student is only one second later than that arbitrarily set time, then their work is flagged “LATE” (indeed sometimes in all capital letters, as is the case in our LMS), even if there are hours or days between that “late” submission and when the instructor begins grading. Many instructors argue that holding students accountable to this kind of inhumanly strict and arbitrary standard is necessary to prepare them for “the real world,” but it has been our experience that there are very few deadlines as strict and immobile in our professional lives, within and outside higher education. We also argue that appeals of this sort are founded squarely on visions of the instructor and the classroom as “civilizing” mechanisms in which the student (and the world that is real for the student) are constructed as the “savage” other. As people with bodies, we all have different times of the day when we are most (or least) energetic and do our best work. Students have different emotional (and motivating) reactions to deadlines—some prefer to “work ahead,” whereas others use the deadline as their driving force to finish the assignment, no matter what time of day that deadline is.

A more humane policy acknowledges the arbitrary nature of due dates in an LMS and explains that the instructor (not the computer system) decides what counts as “on time” and what counts as “late.” For example, one author’s policy states that the instructor will consider work “on time” as long as it is turned in (or the test completed) by the time they start grading it. Not only does this contextualize the temporal significance of submitting an assignment by a given time frame, but also it injects the instructor’s humanity into the otherwise arbitrary deadline. The policy is described in detail in the syllabus, including framing it using several of the arguments in this part. In practice, this policy adds no work to the instructor’s grading: the instructor simply ignores the LMS flag of “LATE” and grades as usual. In fact, the policy has actually improved the working conditions for students and faculty by reducing both student anxiety and emails asking for extensions as well as the instructor’s emotional and logistical labour in responding to those requests.

Students have various caregiving responsibilities and work schedules, and the freedom to work at their own schedule is one of the ostensible benefits of online asynchronous classes. This idea of student autonomy in the schoolwork schedule is in conflict not only with the strict and arbitrary nature of LMS due dates and times but also with strict, punitive, and often arbitrary policies on work that might be days or weeks late or missing altogether. If we think about late work from a care perspective, then the well-known reasons start to ring false. The argument that “it isn’t ‘fair’ for some students to have more time” assumes that all students are equal in all ways, which is not true. Harsh penalties for “late” work, though designed to account for fairness and as an incentive to submit work on time, can make students feel anxious, discouraged (e.g., “why bother to do the work if I’m not going to get all the credit for it?”), and ashamed. None of these feelings is conducive to learning.

In crafting a late policy grounded in humanity, we propose several guiding tenets.

• A late policy should allow for the rhythms of life that do not align with the normative rhythm of the semester.
• A late policy should acknowledge that our responsibilities will sometimes and unexpectedly be more important and more urgent than schoolwork at times that we cannot choose or predict.
• A late policy should acknowledge that our bodies need rest, sometimes unexpectedly and inconveniently.
• A late policy should not only acknowledge our embodied nature but also accept and accommodate it without punishment (and without creating environments in which students must ask for permission to deviate from such an impossible ideal).
• And a late policy should address, without shame or sanction, the fact that sometimes circumstances are too much to complete the class adequately by the end of the semester.

Participation and Attendance Policies

Another area of course policy that can open up space for humanity is composed of requirements for attendance and participation. How these terms are defined in an online classroom can vary depending on the particular online modality—for example, if there are synchronous class sessions held with videoconferencing software (e.g., Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet) or if the class is held in a completely asynchronous format.

Attendance policies for online courses with synchronous meetings often mirror or even exceed the policies typically used for in-person courses. To paraphrase an actual policy of an unnamed colleague, for students to be counted as present, they must log in to the course meeting with their video cameras on, their faces clearly visible and well lit, be professionally dressed, and participate in class discussions and activities when directed by the instructor. Policies of this kind can be rooted in well-intentioned attempts to develop students’ “professionalism” or concerns that students might feign attendance by “Zoom ghosting”: that is, technically logging in only to check out.

What we argue is missing from policies that include such stipulations are pedagogical investments in student-instructor trust and in respect for the complex and nuanced realities of students’ embodied lives. The notable shift toward surveilling student behaviour and appearance that occurred following the widespread move to technologically enhanced meetings at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic reveals the remnants of the oppressive humanizing via civilizing project, from invasive exam proctoring software to rigid appearance-based attendance policies. Furthermore, common appeals to professionalism, accountability, and obedience are sexist, racist, ableist, and classist, assuming ready and stable access to the internet, a safe and secure home environment with ample private space, and access to (if not an actual interest in) clothing deemed legitimate by the institution. Alternatives to these policies centre demonstrations of learning and engagement that need not require a live video stream. Verbal statements, poll responses, or chat features provide opportunities for students to contribute to the course without requiring an invasion of their privacy.

Beyond how participation is defined, policies can also delineate how many classes a student is permitted to miss. A typically synchronous course attendance policy might state that students are permitted a certain number of absences per term before their grades are negatively affected or delineate “excused” and “unexcused” absences. Many LMSs and institutional tracking systems require student absences to be entered in the binary excused/unexcused format. Cemented by technological code, this flattening of absences to an institutional marker of legitimate or illegitimate reflects a pedagogical value rooted in punitive rather than care ethics.

Drawing assumptions about students’ engagement with and commitment to a course based on their attendance reduces their humanity to an outdated and impractical ideal of students solely as scholars—unfettered by financial, familial, physical health, or mental health constraints. It also reflects arrogance, entitlement, and a certain amount of authoritarianism among instructors. Although as instructors we might labour long hours to create engaging synchronous sessions that we hope will positively affect those who attend them, fixing our attention—and our assessment, as reflected in course grades—on students’ choice or ability to be present in class sessions is not centred on humanity. Thus, attendance policies ought to be seriously reconsidered if not abandoned, at least in some courses.

Which alternatives for traditional notions of attendance and participation can the online environment create? And to what extent can humanity be forged in online spaces that all too often reduce our complexities to binary code? A particularly fruitful avenue lies in the rich literature on universal design for learning (UDL). UDL takes as its premise that the learning environment should be designed from the start with features that give more people access to engage, learn, and succeed without the need for retrofitted accommodations after the fact (i.e., documentation for absences, additional time on assignments) (King-Sears, 2009).

Although much of UDL emphasizes lowering barriers to access—such as removing rigid personal and technological requirements for attending a synchronous class session—it also points to the importance of student autonomy and flexibility. Rather than require that students complete the same assignment in the same way, UDL suggests offering students options for how they can demonstrate their knowledge of the content. This might require more creativity in assignment construction, but we have enacted these principles in our online courses across different disciplines in a variety of ways.

In an introductory philosophy course, students had the option to participate in synchronous class discussions or to log in to a weekly discussion board on the LMS. Students could earn extra credit by creating their own “café conversation” in which they arranged a time to discuss the course material with a classmate and submit a written reflection on that conversation (one could also ask the students to submit an audio recording of the conversation). One could modify this into a “Twitter café” in which to post comments on social media about course material using a common course hashtag and respond to classmates. For a final assignment on an assigned book, students had the option to choose a theme and dialogue about it with a community member (family, co-worker, non-profit, etc.) and write a reflection, create an art project inspired by it, or write a traditional research paper.

In a mid-level psychology course, students were given the option to choose which six case studies out of nine they would like to produce assessments for across the semester. Making use of the course LMS gradebook feature to tally assignments completed kept everyone on the same page and allowed students to stagger their workload across the semester in necessary ways while granting them the opportunity to engage in materials that they found most interesting or relevant. In an introductory women’s studies course, students were asked to interpret and present the concepts addressed in any one of the course readings in a novel format. The submissions for this assignment ranged from poems and paintings to essays and mixed media productions, yet each demonstrated a deep engagement with and mastery of the course content.

Concluding Thoughts

There are rich opportunities for feminist potential in online education. Capitalizing on these opportunities requires careful negotiation of the online environment, including the oppressive and inhumane biases and assumptions that often underlie the coding of our LMSs and online classrooms. Although our attempts, as described here, offer a starting point, we are mindful that institutional and other constraints can shape this work differently for others. For example, some institutions employ universal, standardized course policies or charge administrators (and not instructors) with negotiating extensions or other academic accommodations. In these examples, as well as in a much broader sense, an instructor’s humanizing work in the classroom might always be in conflict with the dehumanizing structure and culture of the academy at large, steeped in capitalist, racist, and sexist notions of “knowledge” and “success.” We encourage instructors to sit with these tensions and, where possible, enact changes (big or small) that move them closer to a feminist pedagogy of humanity.

We contend that humanizing the online environment is a project that compels us to reckon with the misogynistic, racist, and colonialist histories of humanizing efforts, of higher education, and in many cases of our own institutions. In doing so, we create the opportunity—and responsibility—to name who and what our online classrooms are for. By constructing our online courses with policies based on pedagogies of care, flexibility, and embodiment, we contend that online education can succeed in delivering its promise to drive equity in both educational access and achievement.

Key Takeaways

• Undertaking the feminist goal of humanizing the online classroom must be done with a critical eye on the colonialist, misogynist, and racist history of projects aiming to qualify humanity and to humanize others.
• Reclaiming the notion of humanizing as a feminist project involves recognizing how assumptions about the ideal student are rooted in oppression, abandoning carceral approaches to the classroom, and resisting the framing of the online environment as neutral.
• Far-reaching changes to the online classroom environment are possible through course policies that deliberately centre the embodied humanity of both students and instructors.

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