Teaching Presence

Online Faculty Development Course

In college courses Teaching Presence is the frequent influence and evidence of an instructor. More simply, your students want to know you are a real teacher who built and leads the course, and is committed to their success.

In recent years pedagogy experts advocate for guide-on-the-side teaching, as opposed to sage-on-the-stage teaching: help students acquire knowledge, skills, and ability through their own activity, rather than talking at them or telling them the answers. But students often want to see or hear from a professor who leads the learning, and complain when a course appears to be a set of self-paced modules, tended only by a faceless caretaker. If Canisius students wished to teach themselves, they could do it much cheaper than what they pay to attend classes at Canisius College. Plus, as we've seen with RSI, the U.S. Department of Education requires that distance education courses feature a strong instructor presence, and instructor-student interaction.

By teaching online, you needn't schedule time to prepare and deliver a performance each week in the classroom, so why not build in more time for professor-student interaction?

Course Organization and Directions

Remember those tips for course organization and documentation we covered last week? When students can find what they need each week, interact with one another with little confusion, and feel confident that they can "speak" with you (email, web meeting office hours, and so on), they see that there's a real professor running the class. The effort you put into building a quality course is clear to them.

Feedback

In subsequent weeks we'll look at possibilities for student composition but for now, simply consider how detailed feedback to students on the quality of their work is teaching presence. Besides providing insights on how they are doing, personalized feedback shows students that you care about their success, rather than simply exchanging a grade for their effort.

Participate

Later we will explore asynchronous discussions. Here, it's enough to say that you can increase teaching presence by participating in the discussions you assign for them. Offer a model post (an example of quality work). Point out when a student makes an especially insightful comment. Ask a student to expand upon something that's vague. However you do it, when students see you in an online discussion, they know you are part of the class, and not just managing it.

Video

Next week we'll look at video creation but here it's enough to say that, if you record yourself in video or audio, students will watch and listen. At least some of this media can be reused, semester-after-semester.

In this demo discussion, the instructor posts just to prompt student "Luna Cat" to expand upon something she introduced.

Convey Enthusiasm

Whenever you write or record content for your online course, show enthusiasm for your subject. This needn't be dramatic, but imagine it's like a day when you are particularly motivated to teach. Your enthusiasm is infectious. (In F2F teaching, getting through a class on a bad day, when you have a head cold or have just received bad news, can be tough. In online, you can often avoid it.)

Candor

When writing or speaking in an online course, practice good grammar, diction, spelling, and most of the other kind of standards you want your students to follow in composition. But recognize that formal or scholarly tone might not be appropriate. A little candor in your delivery, with some contractions, some harmless pop-culture references, and a little polite humor are appropriate to warm up the class tone a bit. (Many faculty naturally do this in a F2F class.)

Professors teaching face-to-face classes may believe their classroom presence - lecturing, and moderating discussions - establishes teaching presence. But simply being present as the professor does not automatically convey warmth and a sense of commitment. So the above tips are equally valuable for face-to-face coursework.

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