Leveraging Teaching Presence in Online Courses: Strategies, Technology, and Student Perspectives

The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework has been widely used to guide the research and practice of online courses. In the CoI framework, three essential elements were identified to be critical for a successful online learning experience: social, cognitive, and teaching presences. While the three presences are overlapping and interdependent, teaching presence is known to be key to the creation of a community of inquiry by addressing cognitive and social issues. Starting with an overview of the CoI framework, this chapter mainly focuses on teaching presence and its two dimensions: instructional design and organization and directed facilitation. Specific strategies and examples for each dimension to leveraging teaching presence in a technology-rich online course are presented and described. In addition, a student’s learning experience in the course is also shared to provide a student’s perspective of the strategies.

[1]  Pm Jenkinson,et al.  Cognitive , 2020, Definitions.

[2]  D. Garrison,et al.  Facilitating Cognitive Presence in Online Learning: Interaction Is Not Enough , 2005 .

[3]  Elizabeth Murphy,et al.  Recognising and promoting collaboration in an online asynchronous discussion , 2004, Br. J. Educ. Technol..

[4]  Miguel Nussbaum,et al.  Technology as small group face-to-face Collaborative Scaffolding , 2009, Comput. Educ..

[5]  D. Garrison,et al.  The Development of a Community of Inquiry over Time in an Online Course: Understanding the Progression and Integration of Social, Cognitive and Teaching Presence. , 2008 .

[6]  Douglas Archibald,et al.  Fostering the development of cognitive presence: Initial findings using the community of inquiry survey instrument , 2010, Internet High. Educ..

[7]  Karen Swan,et al.  Developing a community of inquiry instrument: Testing a measure of the Community of Inquiry framework using a multi-institutional sample , 2008, Internet High. Educ..

[8]  J. D. Baker.  An investigation of relationships among instructor immediacy and affective and cognitive learning in the online classroom , 2004, Internet High. Educ..

[9]  Fengfeng Ke,et al.  Examining online teaching, cognitive, and social presence for adult students , 2010, Comput. Educ..

[10]  Patrick B. O'Sullivan,et al.  Mediated Immediacy , 2004 .

[11]  Gary R. Morrison,et al.  An Analysis of Distance Education Research: Implications for the Instructional Technologist. , 2000 .

[12]  Lynette Nagel,et al.  Supersizing e-learning: What a CoI survey reveals about teaching presence in a large online class , 2010, Internet High. Educ..

[13]  Michael J. Stahl,et al.  Effectiveness of Combined Delivery Modalities for Distance Learning and Resident Learning , 2001 .

[14]  J. Arbaugh.  How Instructor Immediacy Behaviors Affect Student Satisfaction and Learning in Web-Based Courses , 2001 .

[15]  Lisa Marie Blaschke,et al.  Creating Effective Collaborative Learning Groups in an Online Environment , 2009 .

[16]  D. Sadler.  Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems , 1989 .

[17]  Peter Shea,et al.  Online instructional effort measured through the lens of teaching presence in the community of inquiry framework: A re-examination of measures and approach , 2010 .

[18]  Zehra Akyol,et al.  Assessing metacognition in an online community of inquiry , 2011, Internet High. Educ..

[19]  Vivian H. Wright,et al.  Improving Online Course Design through Usability Testing , 2010 .

[20]  Nada Dabbagh,et al.  Scaffolding: An important teacher competency in online learning , 2003 .

[21]  Philip C. Abrami,et al.  Strategies for Teaching Students to Think Critically , 2015 .

[22]  Kyu Yon Lim,et al.  Online university students' satisfaction and persistence: Examining perceived level of presence, usefulness and ease of use as predictors in a structural model , 2011, Comput. Educ..

[23]  Joanna C. Dunlap,et al.  From pixel on a screen to real person in your students' lives: Establishing social presence using digital storytelling , 2010, Internet High. Educ..

[24]  David Annand.  The Problem of Computer Conferencing for Distance-Based Universities , 1999 .

[25]  D. Garrison,et al.  Exploring causal relationships among teaching, cognitive and social presence: Student perceptions of the community of inquiry framework , 2010, Internet High. Educ..

[26]  Frank McCluskey,et al.  Student Perceptions of the Relationship between Indicators of Teaching Presence and Success in Online Courses , 2010 .

[27]  Peter Shea,et al.  Learning presence as a moderator in the community of inquiry model , 2012, Comput. Educ..

[28]  David Wiley,et al.  Instructional Use of Learning Objects , 2001 .

[29]  D. Randy Garrison,et al.  Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education , 1999, Internet High. Educ..

[30]  A. P. Rovai.  Building Sense of Community at a Distance , 2002, Distances et médiations des savoirs.

[31]  Catherine McLoughlin,et al.  A learner-centred approach to developing team skills through web-based learning and assessment , 2002, Br. J. Educ. Technol..

[32]  Joanna C. Dunlap,et al.  Teaching Tip: Tweeting the Night Away: Using Twitter to Enhance Social Presence , 2009, J. Inf. Syst. Educ..

[33]  P. Shea,et al.  A study of teaching presence and student sense of learning community in fully online and web-enhanced college courses , 2006, Internet High. Educ..

[34]  T. Anderson,et al.  Three Generations of Distance Education Pedagogy. , 2010 .

[35]  Curtis J. Bonk,et al.  DOES SENSE OF COMMUNITY MATTER? an Examination of Participants' Perceptions of Building Learning Communities in Online Courses , 2007 .

[36]  Zehra Akyol,et al.  Understanding cognitive presence in an online and blended community of inquiry: Assessing outcomes and processes for deep approaches to learning , 2011, Br. J. Educ. Technol..