Guiding Course Development: Trauma-Informed Rubrics for Asynchronous Online Learning Environments

Trauma has a ubiquitous and deleterious impact on learning and engagement, impacting students in physiological and psychological ways and thus interfering with nearly every facet of the learning experience. Educators who are attuned to these effects can design trauma-informed courses that anticipate and attend to student needs. We contribute to the extensive research on humanizing and trauma-informed pedagogies in online spaces by focusing on instructional approaches that can be structured to enhance student safety, engagement, and learning outcomes within asynchronous learning environments. We propose two rubrics – one focusing on the instructor role and other focusing on course content – to provide guidance to instructors and course facilitators in their course development of trauma-informed content in online learning environments.