Leveraging Teaching Presence in Online Courses

The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework has been widely used to guide the research and practice of online courses. In the CoI framework, three essential elements were identified to be critical for a successful online learning experience: social, cognitive, and teaching presences. While the three presences are overlapping and interdependent, teaching presence is known to be key to the creation of a community of inquiry by addressing cognitive and social issues. Starting with an overview of the CoI framework, this chapter mainly focuses on teaching presence and its two dimensions: instructional design and organization and directed facilitation. Specific strategies and examples for each dimension to leveraging teaching presence in a technology-rich online course are presented and described. In addition, a student's learning experience in the course is also shared to provide a student's perspective of the strategies.

Interactivity and Immediacy in Online Academic Programs

Attention to the quality issues of distance education in higher education has focused primarily on courses. Entire academic programs are now delivered online, and faculty members must spend a significant amount of resources in addressing curricular-issues of online programs, as opposed to pedagogical issues for the courses they teach. Priorities for instructor interactivity and immediacy can become explicit goals for all learning experiences in academic programs. This chapter is organized in three parts: (1) the value of using interactivity/immediacy in the design of extended learning academic programs, (2) instructional design best practices for developing interactivity and immediacy in online academic programs, and (3) recommendations for different level of academic programs, including undergraduate, master's, doctoral, and specialized programs, including teacher education, certificates, and professional development.

“I'm Here for You”

The author examines instructor presence by considering its historical role, the many important tasks that instruction presence accomplishes, and many ways instructional presence can be shown in online learning. Instructor presence has historically fulfilled four key functions: guidance, socialization, motivation, and coordination. Tasks that instructor presence can help with include welcoming and orienting learners, providing grades and explanations for grades, communicating course and instructor expectations and feedback on learner work, offering follow-up questions and comments, and moderating discussions. Seven techniques suggested to provide a sense of instructor presence include scheduling predetermined, regular appearances online, providing quick responses to comments and assignments, making occasional instructor posts throughout course discussions, offering periodic, brief, personal comments, providing special periods of instructor access, simulating presence by means of prerecorded audio or video clips and using instructor representatives.

Instructor Immediacy and Authenticity

Online instructors necessitate the implementation of immediacy and authenticity on a continuous basis within an instructional endeavor. Towards more fully understanding the immediacy and authenticity of an instructor's efforts, aspects related to interactive activities, instructor's philosophical beliefs systems, and understanding cognitive vulnerability within an online instructional environment are vitally important to learner success. Further, while developing a community of practice supports the instructor's efforts to engage learners more fully within the instructional success capable within an online instructional environment, while also focusing upon enhancing the talent pool within the course environment. A talent-propelled instructional environment supports the learners while also enhancing the instructor's viability and strength of positive instructional experience.

Building Teaching Presence in Online Classes

In their framework outlining educational experiences for online students, Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) identify and explain the critical elements of a Community of Inquiry that support instruction and learning. The elements include: cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence. While an online educational experience is impacted by the interplay of all three presences, new online teachers may struggle with developing a teaching presence since their own educational experiences as students may be very different from the ones they encounter as online instructors (Lortie, 1975). In this book chapter, the importance of teaching presence will be discussed. Strategies for developing online teacher presence will be examined and technologies for fostering teacher presence will be outlined. The chapter concludes with broad design principles that apply to the construction of online learning environments that foster a strong teacher presence.

Students' Perceptions of the Online Instructors' Roles in a Massive Open Online Course

Scholars prefer applying metaphors to interpret the instructor's role in online education, such as facilitators, mentors, e-moderators, and “leading the band”, but the rise of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) has reshaped the online teaching and learning practices. Accordingly, the role of instructors in MOOCs is expected to be redefined based on the precedent framework. This research inquiry thus explores students' perceptions of the instructor's role in a MOOC, Technology Applications in Education, regarding four dimensions of Berge's classifications: pedagogical, managerial, social, and technical. An emerging framework of instructor's role in a MOOC is construed to benefit professionals and academics investing in MOOC teaching and learning. Besides, designing a cohesive, structured course is evident in the roles of MOOC instructors, and instructors' timely interaction as a “real person” also influences students' learning experience.

Macromedia Director-MX Lessons Development (MAD-LED) Model

Dissemination of teaching-learning information through online and distance-learning methods can only be effective if the materials are interactively presented among all the stakeholders, that is, the teacher, the learner, and the content itself. The content being used need to dynamically respond according to the prevailing learning circumstances that may demand the interactivity involving text, video, audio, graphics, and animation in a real-time environment. Based on this premise, Macromedia Director-MX Lessons Development system, abbreviated in this work as MAD-LED Model, was envisaged. The MAD-LED Model utilises the combination of nonverbal immediacy and multimedia Macromedia Director-MX technologies. The situational variable of teacher nonverbal immediacy is associated with student's motivation to study and is thus essential for effective classroom instruction. The multimedia Macromedia Director-MX tools such as cast, stage, score, and control panel are used to design and develop animation utilising the text, video, audio, and graphics.

Facebook Mediated Learning Environments in Pakistan

This chapter explores teacher immediacy in online learning environments, focusing on the use of social media - Facebook as a teaching tool in Art and Design education institutions in Pakistan. The study is based on existing teaching practice in Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture and Department of Visual Studies, University of Karachi. Following a mixed method approach including observation and interviews with both teachers and students, the chapter identifies the reasons teachers use Facebook in teaching practice and explores the reasons that limit their use of this potentially immediacy inducing environment. It also includes a study of content including video, links to articles and popular culture manifestations like memes and emoticons, which could be used in teaching via social media and the implications for learning and cognition. The concept of immediacy is explored and the chapter proposes that it be approached more broadly in order to realise the full potential of social media and harness it for better learning and outcomes.

Emphasizing Instructor Presence in Digital Learning Environments

The role of the instructor in any learning environment is a good motivator for students. It is important to understand how the instructor's position can be viewed in the online learning environment. The principal role of the instructor in any learning environment is to assist students in making connections and identifying significance through an educational process. This chapter, examined from an instructional designer and instructor's point of view, sets out to explore the effectiveness of the online teaching presence as an adequate investment of time for the student's benefit.

An Entertaining Game-Like Learning Environment in a Virtual World for Education

This chapter explores the possibilities, benefits, and difficulties of developing game-like virtual environments for education. The goal of this paper is to review the background of game-like environment and impact of game-like environment on learning, discuss the differences on teacher-free and teacher-leading virtual learning environment, and provide examples of game-like environment in the virtual world for education. Finally, this chapter also provides suggestions to readers who would like to create game-like virtual environments for education.