As a faculty member, you know how important it is to be present in your online classroom. You know that you have to be present in the classroom all the time to get to know your students, to grade papers, to answer email, and to participate in the forums.
How do you know if you are achieving the full Social, Cognitive and Teaching Presence required in order to be a successful online teacher?
Here is more information on the Three Presences:
Here is a Cognitive/Social/Teaching Presence checklist of questions to ask yourself to make sure you are achieving these three crucial faculty presence elements.
How do I know if I am achieving Social Presence?
When you establish Social Presence, students get to know you as a person so they can bond with you in class.Students need to see you as a three dimensional person, not just a name on a computer screen.
1. Did you greet each student in the welcome forums?
2. Did you post your own introduction in the forum?
3. Did you post your welcome video on your home page and in the introduction forum?
4. Is your welcome video interesting to watch? Does your welcome video provide students a window into who you are as a three dimensional person?
5. Did you post your picture in your profile so students can see your picture each time they post to the forums?
6. Do you invite students to dialogue with you? to email you with questions?
7. Do you set a professional tone so students feel comfortable asking you questions?
8. Did you show interest in the student's hobbies in the introduction forum?
9. Did you try to show common ground with your new students by talking about your own hobbies or finding commonalities with students?
10. Did you double check your welcome forum at the end of the first week to make sure you did not accidentally miss greeting or welcoming any new student?
11. In your welcome video, did you mention what school you went to? Why you love teaching? What you teach? your hobbies? your family status? Photos of your pets, vacation, conference? Links to your publications? Did you talk about your favorite book, music, food?
How do I know if I am achieving Cognitive Presence?
Cognitive Presence is established when you as a teacher get to know your students very well. You also want to get to know your students' reasons for taking the class and have students establish learning goals for the class.
1a. What are the students' learning goals? Why is he/she taking this class?
2a. What are his strengths and weaknesses in that class topic? What does he/she want to improve on in this class?
1. Did you send each student a 'how are you doing' email after 2 weeks of class?
2. Did you write on a spreadsheet each students' interest and hobbies so you can ask students about said hobbies in the forums as the class progresses?
3. Do you remember who are the high achieving students and who are the lower achieving students so you can adjust your lessons and forum questions accordingly?
4. Did you ask each student what they want to get out of the class? What goals do each students have for the class?
5. Do you know which student is nervous about the class?
6. Which student is a young student? older non-traditional student? a military student? adult student?
7. Do you know which student is a first time student taking the class or if this is the second time the student is taking the class because they failed it the first time?
8. Which students are married? not married? military? civilian? on deployment? stateside? retired?
9. Did you create a non-graded forum so students can casually ask you questions about the class, a forum where you can get to know the students on a casual basis?
How do you know if you have achieved Teaching Presence?
Teaching Presence involves excellent learner centered class design and learner centered mentoring, guiding and coaching.
1. Did you design your classroom with a clear class objective?
2. Did you design your class with clear lesson/weekly objectives?
3. Did you use measurable action verbs (Bloom's Taxonomy) in your objectives?
4. Are your assessments measurable?
5. Are your class instructions clear and consistent?
6. Is your classroom easy to use for new students? If not, did you provide a classroom tutorial for new students on how to navigate the classroom and how to find forums, assignments, quizzes, and grades?
7. Does your syllabus follow the school templates? Did you provide accurate due dates for all your assignments?
8. Do you have your teacher contact information prominently displayed on the home page?
9. Is your introduction prominently displayed on the home page?
10. Is the home page pleasing to the eye with graphics and interesting to read?
11. Does your home page contain clear information on where students can get Tech Support help?
12. Are your office hours, email etc..made clear in your Teacher Contact information?
13. Are there any dead links?
14. Does your teaching style reflect the 3 phases of the class? Early in the class, students are exploring and discovering the topic, so you have more of a teacher-centered class where you direct students and tell students where to go and what to do as well as get students acquainted with the class topic by using lower level Bloom questions (Define, Understand) questions?
15. Then by the middle of the class, are you now the Guide by the Side who helps students synthesize information as students start to integrate the class material to their lives and learn to apply key concepts to their major?
16; Then by the end of the class, are you helping students bring closure to the class by asking students on reflecting on take-away lessons they have learned from the class and asking students to evaluate what they learned and how the class design/your teaching can be improved for the future?
17. Does your class design reflect the three kinds of interaction crucial to good class design? 1. Student to Student interaction? Teacher to Students interaction? Teacher to student one on one interaction?
18. Are you a Sage on the Stage teacher or a Guide by the Side teacher?
More Faculty Reflection Questions.
1. What does active faculty engagement mean to you?
2. What does Teaching Excellence looke like to you in an online classroom?
3. How do you measure Teaching Excellence by the university? by self audit? by classroom visits by your boss? What is the difference between a self audit and a classroom visit?
4. How do you respond to a bad faculty performance review? Are you positive? negative? defensive? cooperative?
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