With the prevalence of online chat bots and robocalls, we sometimes find ourselves asking: “Are you a machine or a real person?” Students can also experience this when taking an online course with an “absent” instructor. Instructor presence in an online course has been cited in research as a major influence of student satisfaction and engagement, which may impact their ability to learn the course content (e.g., Ladyshewsky, 2013; Gray and DiLoreto, 2016). So what can we do to “show up” to class as an online statistics instructor?
The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) is one model used to classify the types of instructor presence for a rich educational experience. The framework is based on three types of presence: Social, Teaching, and Cognitive. You can find a large collection of publications and resources related to the CoI framework on the CoI website. In the model, the entire educational experience is the result of the interrelationship (or overlap) of the social, teaching and cognitive presence. Let’s explore each presence and how they might apply to an online statistics course.
Social Presence
Social presence shows that you are a real human teaching the students. Examples of incorporating social presence in an online course include…
Start of the course
- Post an introductory video to put your face and voice with a name. Share your interests, hobbies, research, and the keys to success in your course.
- Use an introduction forum to allow everyone to share a thing or two about themselves. Make the prompts interesting and provide various format options. Educational social media platforms like Flipgrid and Yammer provide text, audio, and video options beyond the standard text based discussion boards.
Throughout the course
- Link to current events that apply to your content. You don’t have to look far to find current statistical reporting. For example…
- Incorporate humor into announcements, discussions or lesson content. Humor can help to build connections with the students, reduce anxiety and even improve learning. The CAUSE fun collection provides a plethora of humorous statistics related items to use in the statistics classroom.
Teaching Presence
Teaching presence refers to the technical set-up and design of the learning management system and the design of the learning materials that the students engage with (e.g., content, activities, assessments). Examples of integrating Teaching Presence in an online course include…
- Provide clear directions on how to get started the first time they enter the course.
- Have contact information, resources, and links for finding help and support. This includes technical support, resources for statistics software, and who to contact (e.g., TAs, instructors, other) and when.
- Create navigation through the course that is clear and optimized for efficiency.
- Make expectations and directions clear, thorough, and concise on all learning materials.
- Offer timely, constructive, and frequent feedback in a variety of formats (text, audio, video). Your LMS might offer built-in or integrated media tools, such as Zoom, VoiceThread, Kaltura or YouTube.
Cognitive Presence
The cognitive presence determines how students create meaning of the course content. Through activities, assignments, and discussions, the instructor can challenge and lead students through the content. Examples of creating Cognitive Presence in an online course include…
- Create a reflection journal where students can make their thinking visible. For example…
- You could set up a 3-2-1 post, where they post: 3 key concepts of the lesson, 2 ways in which they can apply the concept to their life, work, or future career, and 1 challenge or difficulty they are still having.
- Provide lesson overview videos connecting the new content to prior knowledge or previous lessons. Demonstrate how the new content fits into the big picture of the course (or program).
- Have students “make sense” of output from statistical software or results from a research article by asking questions about conceptual understanding rather than procedural knowledge.
- Have students spot errors in worked examples that might include incorrect calculations, equations, software code, software output, or hypothesis testing conclusions.
The examples provided are just a sample of the myriad of options available for creating presence in an online course. However, THE most important thing is to show up! Your presence is important. Presence can create a positive learning community that will not only motivate your learners, but you as well.
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Contributing author John Haubrick is an instructional designer and assistant teaching professor for the Penn State Department of Statistics where he supports the teaching and design of the online statistics courses.
References:
Ladyshewsky, Richard K. “Instructor Presence in Online Courses and Student Satisfaction.” International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, vol. 7, no. 1, Jan. 2013. DOI.org (Crossref), doi:10.20429/ijsotl.2013.070113.
Garrison, D. Randy, et al. Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education. 1999. Semantic Scholar, doi:10.1016/S1096-7516(00)00016-6.
Gray, Julie A., and Melanie DiLoreto. “The Effects of Student Engagement, Student Satisfaction, and Perceived Learning in Online Learning Environments.” International Journal of Educational Leadership Preparation, vol. 11, no. 1, May 2016. ERIC, https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1103654.
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