Online Presence

According to Garrison, Anderson, & Archer (2000), there are three unique types of presence an instructor needs to present to create an effective educational experience for their students: cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence. While it is true that all three types of presence are necessary, it also true that without first establishing a strong social presence it will be much more difficult to establish strong cognitive or teaching presence.

Social Presence

Social presence is defined as the social environment created in an online course. Establishing social presence is both the most significant and objectively easy type of presence to establish. It requires much more in the way of time and planning than it does in terms of mental effort. Below are some tips for establishing a good social presence in your online course:

Early Vigilance

Communicate with your students early and often in the semester. Especially in the first two weeks of the course, be sure and post announcements and encouraging messages. Send e-mails letting students know you are happy to have them and express your excitement for the semester. Remember, we don't have the opportunities for "water cooler chat" before and after class so we must find ways to build relationships with students and earn their trust and respect. Countless empirical and anecdotal evidence has shown that students have higher levels of motivation and achievement when they feel connected to their instructor and that they are a member of a learning community.

Frequency Matters

Students need to hear from their instructors on a weekly basis. You wouldn't dream of just cancelling class meetings for a week would you? Be sure that your online students are hearing from you in some way a few times a week. This can be in the form of announcements, feedback, synchronous meetings, discussion posts, or anything else that lets them know you are there on the other end of that computer screen as an engaged and invested partner in their educational pursuit.

Examples

• Welcome Video
• Course Orientation Video
• Module Overview Video
• Instructor-made lecture videos
• Announcements (text-based or via video)
• Heavy presence in discussion forums

Cognitive Presence

Cognitive Presence encompasses the course content and its contribution to critical thinking skills. Just because you have created social interactions between and among students and yourself does not mean that those interactions are cognitively stimulating or that learning is taking place. We must strive to create learning outcomes that are relevant, long-lasting, and meaningful.

Clear Expectations

It is imperative that you are extremely explicit in terms of objectives, goals, and each person's role in achieving them. First, you must determine what the objectives are and decide how you will communicate these to your students. Then, you must provide clear instructions for exactly what you want your students to do and how you want them to do it. You know that one kid in your traditional class setting who seems to always be confused about what is going on in class? Pretend you are specifically trying to communicate to that kid what they should be doing in your online course setting.

Meaningful Interaction

In the world of online teaching and learning both quality and quantity matter equally. You should be interacting with your students on a regular basis and a good percentage of those interactions need to be meaningful. That is, something more than an announcement that there is a quiz on Friday. You need to model for them how you expect them to interact with one another and with you. If you don't care enough to but time and energy into engaging in a discussion forum, why should they?

Teaching Presence

The organization of course content, activities, and interaction combined with the content knowledge, pedagogoical knowledge, and technological knowledge of the instructor. “Teaching presence begins before the course commences as the teacher, acting as the instructional designer, plans and prepares the course of studies, and it continues during the course, as the instructor facilitates the discourse and provides direct instruction when required” (Anderson, Rourke, Garrison, and Archer, 2001, p.5).

Course Design

This includes the selection and sequencing of content. What will you be teaching and how will you format the course? Course design also encompasses the selection/creation of learning objectives and the process of creating alignment between objectives, instruction, and assessment. A well-aligned course means that you can easily communicate to students what they will learn or know how to do and point directly to the resources that will assist them in learning and the assessment that will measure their mastery.

Instruction

How will you deliver your instruction in an online setting? Pre-recorded lecture videos? Synchronous virtual lectures? A combination of your own lectures and publisher provided content or other videos found online? Further, what is your plan for providing feedback? What technology tools will you need to make this happen and will you require training for these tools?

Facilitation

This is all of the things that you do "behind the scenes" that help students be successful such as: reporting students to AdvisTrac when they fall behind, keeping grades up to date so that students always know where they stand, referring students to various support services, and all of the administrative-type tasks that factor in to creating a positive course climate.

Anderson, T., Rourke, L., Garrison, D. R., & Archer, W. (2001). Assessing teaching presence in a computer conferencing context. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 5(2), 1–17.

Garrison, D. R., T. Anderson., and W. Archer. 2000. Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education 2 (2–3): 87–105.