Stephen Downes

"The single most important strategy we can use to help our students succeed in our courses is to care about them as learners and as human beings," says Kona Jones from Richland Community College. What I like about this article is that it contains not just the platitude in the introduction, but a detailed description of how exactly to design for kindness, using her own mathematics course as an example, with concrete steps taken to make sure people feel looked after and cared for in the course. This includes things like a "checklist of all the important things that students should be doing", "videos that students are able to download", asking "what are your preferred names and pronouns, what's your preferred name and preferred pronoun", "backup plan for completing assignments if you experience internet or computer issues", and more.