Building Instructor Presence in an Online Setting
Students should have opportunities for regular and substantive academic interactions with the course instructor in synchronous and asynchronous courses. Strong instructor presence has been shown to increase participation, facilitate knowledge acquisition, and foster a healthy learning community.
The OSU Teaching and Learning Resource Center hosts an excellent resource on this topic that includes background information on the topic and discussion about how course design, facilitation of discourse, and direct instruction all contribute to Instructor Presence. This article also provides practical examples of small things instructors can do to improve their distance learning courses in this area.
Resources on This Topic
-
Quick Tip: Instructor Presence - This short video, created by the Office of Technology and Digital Innovation, provides very useful tips for designing and delivering a online courses in which the presence of the instructor is keenly felt and supports student learning.
-
Online Instructor Presence (Teaching and Learning Resource Center) - This TLRC article discusses the link between direct instruction and instructor presence and provides several examples of practices that can be utilized to increase instructor presence in online courses.
Use the FORCE to Create Sociability and Connect with Online Students
Conklin, S., & Garrett Dikkers, A. (2022). Use the FORCE to Create Sociability and Connect with Online Students. Journal of Applied Instructional Design, 11(2).
This study aimed to identify facilitation strategies that resonated with students in online classes. ‘The researchers wanted to focus on how instructors create a welcoming environment in the online environment.’ Due to its real-world application, they utilized a cross-sectional survey design with a mix of open- and closed-ended questions. Through a review of literature, they examine how instructor presence, instructor connectedness, and instructor social connectedness have positively influenced student learning. The authors reference Martin et al., and their research using Berge’s online facilitation framework. Conklin and Garrett ‘highlight the research literature connecting the facilitation framework with foundational ideas of instructor social presence and connectedness.’ These areas include direct interaction between the instructor and student, instructor social presence, and facilitation through feedback.
Conklin and Garrett’s study began in May 2020 with a survey of 6000 students, interviews in fall 2020, and ended with a second survey of a separate sample of 6000 students in March 2021. With a response rate of 12%, the respondent demographics aligned with the overall student population at the institution. For the purpose of this article, only the qualitative responses from the open-ended questions were utilized.
In the analysis of the results, the authors describe five emerging themes: feedback, organization, response time, communication, and empathy. They present their findings using student remarks to support their data analysis. The following is a summary of each theme. Students responded positively to instructors that provided timely, caring, and quality feedback. Designing and facilitating a well-organized course that includes clear expectations and incorporates instructor presence, impacts student satisfaction and learning. When students receive quick responses to their inquiries, the instructors seem more approachable, and it also alleviates stress the students may be feeling. Students valued instructors that initiated contact with them. Many students responded to the survey that communication in the form of instructor-created videos was highly regarded. The last theme, empathy, relates to an instructor’s sociability. As one of the higher coded responses, empathy from instructors is desired among students because it creates connectedness and a sense of belonging in the online environment.
Conklin and Garrett provide ‘suggestions for using FORCES to create connections with students in the online environment.’ They conclude that instructor presence is key to creating a welcoming online environment for student satisfaction and motivation. ‘Students feel they are seen more as a person rather than a number’ when instructors connect with them.
Conklin, S., & Garrett Dikkers, A. (2021). Instructor Social Presence and Connectedness in a Quick Shift from Face-to-Face to Online Instruction. Online Learning, 25(1).
In this article, the authors investigate the instructional practices used to support students in online learning during the beginnings of the pandemic. Conklin and Garrett surveyed undergraduate and graduate students during the last week of the Spring 2020 semester. Students were asked to ‘focus on a class that was successful in keeping them in touch with their instructor, content, and peers.’ Recognizing the difficulties that arise from a required emergency transition to online teaching, this study reveals ‘how instructor social presence is experienced from the student perspective.’
Through a review of related literature, the authors describe the Community of Inquiry model (CoI), a ‘framework designed to support the learning process, help students achieve higher-order critical thinking skills, and create a community of students and teachers,’ and how its three elements pertain to instructor presence. The three elements of CoI are social, cognitive, and teaching presence. Social presence is the ability to present oneself through digital spaces to the community. Cognitive presence is defined as the extent to which students construct knowledge. Lastly, teaching presence refers to the ‘instructor’s instructional and pedagogical approaches.’ ‘Through these three categories, students can reach meaningful and educational outcomes’ (p. 136). Conklin and Garrett focused on the overlapping teaching and social presence aspects for this study.
Using both qualitative and quantitative data, they found four emerging themes; connectedness, instructor responsiveness and coaching, online learning best practices, and empathic facilitation. Students were asked to rank their preferred methods on connectedness and their responses indicated course emails for communication and instructor-created videos to explain course content were the most important. In the area of instructor responsiveness, over fifty percent of surveyed students indicated that having timely responses (within 12 hours) to inquiries were valued. Some best online teaching practices that students ranked highly important include clear organization of content, instructors that provided assignment clarification and student learning, and materials that incorporated opportunities for students to reflect. Empathic facilitation refers to ‘demonstrating an understanding of others’ situations through processes and practices in the course’ (p. 142). Over sixty percent of students either strongly agree or agree that instructors that create feelings of trust, acceptance, community, and a sense of belonging are central to student learning and motivation.
‘The results of this study recommend connecting with online students through multiple tools, responding in a timely manner, and integrating empathic facilitation within messages either through video, synchronous contact, or text’ (p. 145). The implication of this study is that positive interactions between instructors and students in the digital learning environment are inherently important to student success. This study reveals that students valued synchronous connections with their instructors through multiple methods of delivery. “Giving students multiple formats for interacting with the instructor allows the diverse population to connect via their preference’ (p. 145). The authors elaborate by providing recommendations; utilizing asynchronous video, emails, and announcements while demonstrating care and conversational tone, ‘providing early and iterative feedback’ (p. 146) to lessen misunderstandings on content, and to connect with students through instructional videos. Based on the data, by focusing ‘on the affective aspects of teaching and learning, students are supported in building community and connections in the online space’ (p. 147).
Martin, F., Wang, C., & Sadaf, A. (2020). Facilitation Matters: Instructor Perception of Helpfulness of Facilitation Strategies in Online Courses. Online Learning, 24(1).
esearchers from the University of North Carolina surveyed a hundred instructors on ‘what facilitation strategies they perceived to be the most and least helpful in establishing instructor presence, instructor connection, engagement, and learning in online courses. Data was collected by an online survey tool sent out to faculty and only instructors that taught online or hybrid courses were asked to complete the survey. Due to the methods of data collection and participant responses, the results may not be representative of the larger population. However, the authors conducted an extensive literature review to support their findings.
Using the online facilitation framework (Berge, 1995), Martin and colleagues examine the helpfulness of online facilitation through four constructs, social, managerial, pedagogical, and technical. Each of these constructs may have overlapping components that the authors further categorize; instructor presence, instructor connection, engagement, and learning. Martin et al., identify twelve facilitation strategies using Berge’s framework. In the literature review on instructor presence, they state ‘that instructors’ presence influences their students in their affective learning, cognition and motivation, students’ satisfaction, and students’ sense of community’ (p. 32). It is suggested that by facilitating online learning through active presence, students engage more authentically with the material.
Previous research of faculty demographics was reviewed in order to determine if the results would indicate differences between participants’ gender, delivery method, and course levels taught; and their perceptions of facilitation strategies in online instruction. The authors further explain which facilitation strategies used by instructors are perceived as most-helpful and least-helpful.
Most Helpful Facilitation Strategies:
- Synchronous sessions to present content/answer questions
- Group projects to support peer learning
- Timely response for feedback & questions
- Students taking an active role in course activities
- Consistent course structure: deadlines & content
- Having personal interactions with students
Least Helpful Facilitation Strategies:
- Visual syllabi – if not made with hyperlinks and visuals
- Announcements
- Exams & quizzes
- Synchronous sessions – 11% of instructors considered it helpful, whereas 4% considered it least helpful
The authors note that it is up to the instructor to manage and effectively utilize strategies designed to support student learning. They provide recommendations for best practices for creating instructor presence in the concluding paragraphs. The authors conclude that ‘it is not only important for the instructors to design an effective online course, but also be an effective facilitator’ (p. 42).
Blank Squares: A Narrative of Disillusionment and Hope
Savage, S. L. (2022). Blank Squares: A Narrative of Disillusionment and Hope. Art Education, 75(1), 36–41.
In this article, OSU’s Dr. Shari Savage uses narrative inquiry to describe and analyze how the pandemic affected her class of preservice art educators. Through rich descriptive writing, the author shares the instructional challenges incurred during the height of COVID-19. Like many people, she had to adapt to the digital space as an instructor and mentor. This article emphasizes the need for empathy, flexibility, equity, and transparency from the instructor in order to have an excellent pedagogy.
Twelve Tips for Applying Moore’s Theory of Transactional Distance to Optimize Online Teaching
Roach, V. A., & Attardi, S. M. (2022). Twelve tips for applying Moore’s Theory of Transactional Distance to optimize online teaching. Medical Teacher, 44(8), 859–865.
In this article, the authors provide educators with twelve tips that align with Transactional Distance (TD) Theory for best engaging students in a remote learning environment. They state that ‘transactional distance represents the gap that exists between the knowledge held by the teacher, and that of the learner’ and that the gap ‘presents an opportunity where misunderstanding may occur’ (p.859). By using the following tips to engage students, instructors can ‘manipulate the magnitude of this gap’ (p.859). The twelve tips broadly focus on the design of an online learning environment, the delivery of online teaching, and the refinement stages of course development.
Tip#1: Design learning resources to be adaptive to the needs of each new cohort. Instructors should be willing to adapt premade content to suit the learning needs of each cohort. (p.860)
Tip#2: Consider the relationship between transactional distance and autonomy. Based on previous literature, instructors can support students with making meaningful choices and intrinsic motivation through three types of classroom-based autonomy: organizational, procedural, and cognitive support. (p.861)
Tip#3: Balancing synchronous and asynchronous communication. This means the more interpersonal instructional components are; the more students feel engaged. (p.861).
Tip#4: Choose delivery platforms wisely. “The goal is to minimize the learning curve that stands between students and mastery of the educational objectives.” (p.861)
Tip#5: Be ‘Remediation-Ready.’ During asynchronous online learning, instructors should include a backup plan for disruptions of sessions. (p.862)
Tip#6: Show learners how to navigate content and the platform. Instructors should not assume that students know how to navigate the online learning environment. To improve learner-interface interactions, ‘instructors should demonstrate how the resource can be used to achieve learning objectives.’ (p.862)
Tip#7: Look, listen, and speak carefully. ‘In online learning environments, the ability of both parties to see and hear each other is necessary to convey valuable information about the individuals’ engagement and understanding.’ (p.862)
Tip#8: Build an online learning community and establish a social presence. Instructors can design course content with increased interactions to foster students’ feelings of connectedness and lessen TD. (p.863)
Tip#9: ‘Take the temperature’: solicit feedback from learners. Utilizing opportunities for dialogue, instructors can receive feedback on students’ perceptions and understanding of the course. (p.863)
Tip#10: Refining content in response to changes in students’ needs. Instructors can utilize student feedback to address their needs directly. (p.863)
Tip#11: Anticipate that learner autonomy is context specific. Instructors can ‘adapt their courses to allow learners’ to exercise varying degrees of autonomy and re-assess their need for autonomy throughout the course.’ (p.864)
Tip#12: Capitalize on learner-network interactions. This means that instructors should be aware of the online communities and content resources that students interact with that are not provided by the instructors and to teach students ‘how to evaluate the validity of those external sources.’ (p.864)
Although this paper was initially designed for health profession educators, these twelve tips can be applied across broad online learning environments.
Understanding Transactional Distance in Web-based Learning Environments: An Empirical Study
Huang, X., Chandra, A., DePaolo, C. A., & Simmons, L. L. (2016). Understanding transactional distance in web-based learning environments: An empirical study. British Journal of Educational Technology, 47(4), 734–747.
The purpose of this study was due to the lack of empirical studies that supported Moore’s Transactional Distance (TD) Theory. ‘More specifically, this study was an attempt to address interrelationships of the three [original] constructs; dialogue, structure, and learner autonomy and their combined impact on student perceptions of TD within online learning environments’ (p.745). The authors apply Moore’s theory that ‘distance education is a pedagogical concept’ (p.734) or a psychological and communication gap between the learner and the instructor.
The authors’ findings revealed ‘an inverse relationship between high dialogue, high structure, high learner autonomy, and lower perceived TD’ (p.745). Their findings support ‘that more autonomous learners would be comfortable with higher TD,’ but that a ‘combination of high structure and high dialogue’ (p.745) should be considered for less autonomous learners; ‘the richer the instructional media’ (p.743), such as audio/video tools, the lower the perceived TD; and that whenever appropriate, ‘instructors should plan and require discussion opportunities for the students as a means to increase learner-learner and learner-instructor dialogue within the course’ (p.746). Overall, this study has value for online instructors because it provides verification of Moore’s Transactional Distance Theory.
Literature Review completed by ASC Office of Distance Education Graduate Research Assistant Terrena Conson. Suggestions for other research to include are welcomed and appreciated!