Humanising Online Pedagogy through Asynchronous Discussion Forums

Humanising pedagogy has been a focus of recent research as more universities move to online and blended models of instruction. Online learning has been linked to feelings of isolation, disconnection, and depersonalisation of the learning experience for many students. In South Africa, the shift to online instruction took place in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and recent student movements that brought attention to how the country’s violent history resulted in structural inequalities in terms of race and class that affect learning environments. Thus, humanising pedagogy also meant recognising and addressing how students’ contextual challenges might affect their feelings of connection in the learning environment. In this article, we present a case study of a first-year course at a South African university where we used online discussion forums that required students to engage with weekly forum tasks. Through thematic content analysis of students’ dialogic responses on these forum tasks, we demonstrate how the tasks facilitated humanising pedagogy by allowing students to use their authentic voices, to form social connections, and to reflect their affective and personal experiences. We argue that interactive, asynchronous online forums can be effective tools to facilitate humanising online pedagogy when these forums are designed in ways that encourage dialogic learning, use content that is relevant to students’ contexts, and give students agency by allowing them to select texts for discussion and share their diverse perspectives. Our analysis also showed limitations to forum discussions which include students echoing responses and instances of silencing and unsupportive group dynamics.