Increasing instructor pressence
Instructor presence is an interesting concept in online teaching. It’s easy to focus on the more concrete parts of providing a course such as providing content, setting assignments, creating a neet-o LMS platform. “Presence” seems a much more abstract concept.
As defined in Developing Learning Community in Online Asynchronous College Courses: The Role of Teaching Presence, it can be thought of as:
presenting content and questions
focusing the discussion on specific issues
summarizing discussion
confirming understanding
diagnosing misperceptions
injecting knowledge from diverse sources
responding to technical concerns
What I find interesting about these activities, is that some intention as an instructor needs to be put into how and where to do them. For example, to diagnose misperceptions, I first need to be aware that the misperception exists, which means I need to know what the learner’s perceptions are. Again, this comes back to being intentional in creating places for interaction. If instructor presence is as important as course organization (which the above article suggests), much more consideration needs to be given here.
Some ideas that I have thought of include:
Replacing some full class synchronous sessions with smaller group synchronous sessions
Have students create reflective blogs, in groups
Create directed forums - one thing I did at the beginning of the pandemic was hand out bonus marks for people to contribute to a thread on how they were managing stuck at home. Since this was universally a frustrating situation, this was the most robust forum I’ve ever managed, with students commiserating with each other on an ongoing basis.
Having one on one sessions with students once or twice during the course.
Implementing communication guidelines and promises - ways to ensure students get a response within a set time.
Making all course activities explicit, with comprehensive and consistent ways to communicate expectations
Host drop in zoom sessions for office hours.