Contemporary online course design recommendations to support women's cognitive development

Abstract

Originally, online higher education was imagined to be a utopia for women because gender would be less salient when learners were not physically co-present and thus gender power issues would be lessened. Unfortunately, gender power is present in online classes, hindering women from experiencing the benefits of an equitable learning environment. One approach to eliminating gender power in online classes is to design courses with gender equity in mind. The existing best practices for designing online courses, however, were not developed for the specific purpose of upending gender power. In this poster, I synthesize the best practices for online course design and pose recommendations informed by feminist pedagogy. As more faculty are encouraged to teach online, an updated set of design recommendations that best supports women online learners is valuable both for practitioners and researchers.