Post 34: Be Present in the Course Site

Post 34: Be Present in the Course Site

Best practice 1: Be Present at the course site.

See this website for more information

https://www.instructorpresence.com/

The best online faculty according to students or faculty are faculty who are present in some way, every day in the online class. When I was teaching online, I was present in class 7 days a week. I created presence by spending time in the discussion forums, using time released announcements that remind learners of key dates, by using screen test video, using video wrap ups, and by using video, students got to hear my voice and I got to confirm my presence in class. 

" Social presence is achieved in the community of inquiry model by faculty and students projecting their personal characteristics into the discussion so they become real people parentheses Garrison, Anderson and archer 2011; Swan and Shih, 2005 ) It is imperative that you establish trust so that content discussions can be open and substantive. One of the first tips focuses on strategies for getting appointed as a social level, sharing personal favorite such as drinks, food, ideas, books or movies in the first week this encourages expressions of feelings perspectives and openness." (Conrad, 82)

"Cognitive presence is defined as the extent to which the professor and the students are able to construct  and confirm meaning through sustained discourse in a community of inquiry (Garrison, Anderson and Archer, 2001 page 89). Cognitive presence is cultivated by students expressing a desire to understand ideas more deeply and by dialogue that identifies relationships. Getting a sense of what students know and how they know lays the foundation for the learning experiences. (82)

"Teaching presence in an online course consist of at least two major categories of teaching direction. The first consists of all the course materials that I prepared before the course begins: syllabus, concepts instructions introductions, discussion forums, assessment plans, a list of resources. The second category consists of all the monitoring, mentoring, questioning, and shaping of the growing knowledge of particular learners in a course. The second category facilitating reflection and discourse for the purpose of building understanding. A third category of teaching presence includes the work of direct instruction coaching, and clarifying any intellectual issues with individual students." ( 82)

There are three types of faculty presence according to Boettcher and Conrad:

"Social presence creates connections with learners based on who we are as three-dimensional persons with families, lives, and favorite ideas, people, and places. Pictures of ourselves and our hobbies and interests convey these many dimensions of ourselves and help to build connections and trust." (Boettcher, Conrad,46)

At the beginning of class, it is very important for the teacher to create a bond with her students. During the first week of class students introduce each other in the introduction forum, I always make sure that I read each and every student individually and personally. In my thread on details about my personal hobbies, my wife and I would share common interests with the students. For instance, if a student likes to paint, then I will talk about my favorite way to paint. If a student likes to eat steak, I would talk about my favorite steak recipe. It is important for the student to see the online teacher not just as a name on a computer screen, but also see it at same instructor as a person. I would use also conversational icebreaker questions to get to know the students better. Conversational questions would include the following: If you were on a desert island, and you could only bring one thing, what would you bring?  So, I always get my students to develop trust in me so that when they have questions, they would trust me to answer those questions.

"Teaching presence guides students’ learning experiences. Teaching presence is the sum of all the behaviors faculty use to direct, guide and design the learning experiences. Teaching presence is conveyed through first, the design of the classes and the materials prior to teaching the course, and second, the mentoring, guiding, and directing during the course." (Boettcher, Conrad,46)

Part of  the Teaching Presence is the ability to create a class that is interesting to the students. I always mix up my lectures with graphs, tables, videos and audio so students with different learning styles can benefit from the many ways I write my lectures. I personalize my standardized classrooms with my videos, pictures, welcome video and my unique sense of humor. If students have problems, I create a safe learning space so students feel safe enough to ask me questions. Many students have praised me for being so available to them, and for being so approachable to them. One student wrote, “Thanks, Prof. Ho, for not making fun of my stupid questions when I ask so many of them in my emails. Other teachers just told me to read the syllabus. You always answered each and every one of my questions. I really appreciate you for that.”

"Cognitive presence supports, mentors, and guides students’ intellectual growth, ideas, and challenges. Cognitive Presence is conveyed by all interactions with learners that an instructor  has to support the development of skills, knowledge, and understanding in his or her students." (Boettcher, Conrad,46)

I always pay attention to my students’ level of writing. I also ask what kind of feedback they want from me. If I have a class with a lot of beginners, then I move slowly with them and use more beginning level Bloom Taxonomy simple forum questions whereas if I have a class filled with advanced writing students, I can use the more advanced level Bloom Taxonomy forum questions. Having Cognitive presence means being aware of your students’ level of learning. Vygotsky talks about the ‘level of proximal development’ or what Krashen talks about input + 1, that is the students’ threshold or level of learning or development. As a teacher, you have to know how to adapt your class to your class’s level of learning. You cannot make the class too easy or else the gifted students get bored, nor can you make the class too hard or the remedial students feel overwhelmed. You have to make the class level just above their learning level just enough to make the material challenging and fun, not too boring and not too challenging. To find out students’ level, you look at a student’s writing skills, or the way he writes his/her forum responses to see if they have an advanced level or a intermediate level of writing. You also send out ‘How are you doing?’ emails to students to see what the student wants from the class and what his goals are for the class. After many years of teaching, getting to know my students’ level of writing has become second nature to me.

When I was teaching at AMU, AMU used this Social, Teaching and Cognitive Presence structure to evaluate us on our teaching evaluations. We were evaluated on how much Social Presence, Teaching Presence and Cognitive Presence we had in our classrooms. If you scored high, you would get a perfect hexagon looking chart at the top of your evaluation, and I would always score that perfect hexagon. Interestingly, some evaluators thought I talked too much in the forums, while other evaluators thought I talked too little in the forums.  When an evaluator said I talked too much, then I would hold back that year, then the next evaluator would say I talked too little so then I would go back to talking a lot in the forums. Basically though, I talked as much as I needed or not based on the class needs. Some classes needed me to prod them to get them to discuss the topic, while other classes talked pretty much on their own.