Online Facilitation:

Presence in Action

Aloha and e komo mai! 

This stand alone , asynchronous, short course is intended to provide HPU instructors with practical strategies for facilitating an engaging and human-centered online or hybrid course.  It has been conceptualized to align with the Community of Inquiry framework, which outlines three interwoven kinds of presence essential in constructing an online community: teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence.  This course is appropriate for you if you are new to teaching online or a veteran looking for new tools to add to your teaching toolkit.  

Introduction to the Community of Inquiry Framework

No matter the modality, fostering learning is the primary goal of any course.  In online and hybrid courses, a strong sense of presence leads to increased engagement, mastery of learning outcomes, and overall learner satisfaction.  Teaching presence refers to the ways in which instructors insert themselves into the digital classroom by being active participants, facilitators, and communicators.  While intuitively navigable course organization and clear instruction go a long way towards forging pathways to success, an engaged instructor can make a student feel welcome, a meaningful member of a learning community, and encourage them to persist in a modality that is often characterized by feelings of isolation.  Teaching presence also aligns with the HPU value of Aloha, a force that holds together existence and fosters deep human connection.   


Social presence within the online space  is what Lehman & Conciecao (2010) describe as “being there”,  which  can be achieved through meaningful interactions between instructor and student, as well as among students.  These kinds of interactions often occur more organically in the in-person classroom, where we might include a spur of the moment turn and talk with a neighbor or small group discussion,  whereas they require intentional planning in an online asynchronous class.  Though they require advance planning, interactions such as ice breaker activities,  paired work, group discussions, or collaborative assignments are worthwhile elements that can promote individual agency and ground students within the course, as well as develop their kuleana to contribute meaningfully to the learning community.  


Cognitive presence assumes that learners collaboratively construct knowledge and is how students form meaningful connections to the content.  Cognitive presence is developed through  opportunities for reflection and discourse, specifically focusing on how students approach new problems, grow in understanding, and convey it to their learning community.  The aim of cognitive presence is to help students to move beyond the early stages of learning, to the stage where learning has meaning and where they can understand and apply new concepts (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000). 

There is no perfect recipe outlining the exact proportion of each kind of presence that should occur within a course.  One course may be teaching presence heavy and social presence light, while another may focus more equitably among the three.  As the course instructor, you will need to determine what will work for you, the subject matter, and the students in your course. Throughout this short course, we provide overviews of online facilitation topics that align with the three kinds of presence and outline strategies that can be implemented cross disciplinarily.  Within each topic, you will find HPU exemplars and artifacts aligned with the best practices covered throughout the short course. 


community of inquiry framework

Please use the following fillable PDF to evaluate presence within a course you already teach online (download the PDF and open in Adobe Acrobat to use the fill feature OR print and take notes by hand).  As you progress through each module, reflect upon and take note of strategies that may be appropriate to add to/ or replace strategies to enhance presence throughout.  If you are designing a course from scratch, simply take notes as strategies resonate. If you would like receive a completion certificate , please email this completed form OR images of handwritten notes to kwargo@hpu.edu .  


Online Facilitation Strategies.pdf

Creators of this Course

Katalin Wargo

Director

Online Programs and Academic Partnerships

Catherine Sybrant

Instructional Designer

Online Programs and Academic Partnerships