Being empathetic is essential for delivering a humanized course, but designing online courses to facilitate emotional intimacy is challenging, and online students often perceive their instructors as distant and uncaring. In this session, we will define empathy, review research on its instructional impact, and make the case that empathy is largely a matter of design, not personality. We will share a course from Minnesota State’s Network for Educational Development called Humanizing Your Online Course, featuring activities to help faculty design their courses with empathy as a goal.
