Jessica Bryant
Global Head of Professional Services,
Moodle US LLC
Cultivating Connection: Learner Perceptions of Care in Online Teaching
Thursday, October 01, 2026 | 3:15PM–4:15PM MT
Session Type:
Poster Session
Delivery Format:
Poster Session
What does caring online teaching look like in practice, and do our current frameworks fully capture it? This poster presentation draws on research exploring care ethics in online learning environments, including a qualitative study based on interviews with 14 online learners. Using Noddings's care-centered model of education as a theoretical lens, this research identifies the instructor behaviors, design choices, and pedagogical practices that students experience as genuinely caring. Findings point to two especially crucial competency areas for online instructors: designing and facilitating meaningful collaborative learning activities, and developing feedback literacy. The study also surfaces an emergent and important question of whether "anticipating" student needs through intentional course design represents a distinct act of care that existing frameworks have yet to fully account for in online learning contexts. Whether you work in faculty development, instructional design, or online teaching, this session invites you to explore what care looks like when it must be built into a course before a single student ever logs in.
