Feminist Pedagogy for Teaching Online

This guide provides resources about integrating feminist pedagogy and technology into online, hybrid, and traditional undergraduate courses. The editors specifically designed the guide to support interdisciplinary topics and fields and to focus on active learning practices in social sciences, the liberal arts, the humanities, and STEM subjects. As the editors design and curate this guide, they keep the feminist pedagogy tenets (listed below) in mind.

In the context of this guide, “online” refers to synchronous and asynchronous online education strategies, as well as any time digital and data tools are used in hybrid and in-person classrooms. Though the guide was created to inform online modalities, over time, the editors have expanded their definition of online education to support more educators who are facing new modern demands and challenges while using digital tools across all classroom modalities.

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Feminist Pedagogical Tenets

Connecting to the personal and to communities outside of academia.

Promoting reflexivity.

Concern with materiality (bodies, labor, not just virtual and discursive).

Treating students as agentic co-educators.

Building equity, trust, mutual respect, and support.

Promoting cooperative learning.

Presenting knowledge as constructed.

Examining how gender, intersecting with other social categories, structures our lives, learning, and knowledge production, access to resources and information.

Uncovering the causes of inequality and leveraging resources toward undoing power structures.

Honoring diversity and lived experiences through intersectional approaches.

Considering alternative histories and narratives.

Examining the “why” in addition to the “what”.

Cultivating self-care and boundaries.

Feminist Pedagogy in the Online Environment

Humanizing online teaching/learning.

Creating cultures of care in online classrooms.

Examining (dis)embodiment in virtual teaching/learning.

Using technology intentionally to build communities and enhance learning.

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“To teach in varied communities not only our paradigms must shift but also the way we think, write, speak. The engaged voice must never be fixed and absolute but always changing, always evolving in dialogue with a world beyond itself.”

bell hooks
Teaching to Transgress, 11

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History

The Feminist Pedagogy for Teaching Online Guide came about in August 2020, when in response to COVID-19, Dr. Jacquelyne Thoni Howard and Dr. Clare Daniel were asked to co-chair an online teaching committee to support their colleagues at Newcomb Institute of Tulane University in transferring their shared feminist teaching philosophies to online settings. Using their previous experience in teaching and designing online courses, Daniel and Howard curated the guide to provide their colleagues with a one-stop resource for implementing feminist teaching practices in their online and hybrid courses.

In a matter of days, and after being shared widely on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, the guide reached 6,500 views, indicating a widespread interest among higher education instructors, across a range of fields, in its practical and purposeful presentations of feminist pedagogy online. The sharing of the guide also sparked an opportunity for Daniel and Howard to collaborate with Niya Bond, whose articles about feminist pedagogy had been featured on the guide. In February 2021, the guide moved to a new permanent website and continues to grow as a resource and hub of collaboration. In March 2021, we invited two new co-curators to help shape future directions of this project, Dr. Enilda Romero-Hall and Dr. Liv Newman. In 2021, Women in Higher Education featured the guide in their newsletter.  In 2023, the guide won the Open Scholarship Award by the Canadian Social Knowledge Institute. In November of 2024, an edited collection titled Feminist Pedagogy for Teaching Online will be published by the Athabasca University Press.

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Our Community

Editors

Assignment and Article Contributors

Digital Collaborators

Technical Consultants

Ed Beck, Open & Online Learning Specialist, SUNY Oneonta

Aisha Champagne, Newcomb Institute Graphic Designer

Student Interns

Aaliyah Randall, Newcomb Institute, Digital Research Intern

Emma De Leon, Connolly Alexander Institute for Data Science, Data Research Intern

Emily O’Connell, Newcomb Institute, Digital Research Intern

Hannah Kline Bartels, Newcomb Institute, Digital Research Intern

Madeline Nellis, Newcomb Institute, Information Technology Intern

Naomi Stoner, Newcomb Institute, Information Technology Intern

Rachel Tabor, Newcomb Institute, Graduate Assistant

Sam DeMarinis, Connolly Alexander Institute for Data Science / Newcomb Institute, Digital Research Intern

Sophie Tanen, Newcomb Institute, Information Technology Intern

Tess Kleanthous, Newcomb Institute, Digital Research Intern

Zoe Oboler, Newcomb Institute, Digital Research Intern

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Our Scholarship, Media Coverage & Awards