Effects of Simulated Student Interaction on Student Perceptions of Teaching Presence

The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of the instructor posting in online discussions as a simulated student; particularly the impact simulated student interaction (SSI) had on the instructor/student relationship. Student perceptions were examined using a modified version of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) survey to determine what impact SSI had on teaching presence, cognitive presence, and social presence within the online classroom. The full 34 item CoI Survey was piloted in the summer of 2014 at a small comprehensive university located in northeast Texas. A factor analysis was conducted on the data and the top items from each factor in the instrument extracted. The resulting 17 item instrument demonstrated both validity and reliability. This modified CoI Survey was used in the fall of 2014 with three special education courses making up a control group and an intervention group in a pre-post experimental design. An ANOVA was performed to compare the results of the pre-course and post-course surveys by group. The ANOVA showed a statistically significant difference for all three factors for the intervention group between the pre- and post-course survey, while no significance between surveys was shown for the control group

Best Practices for Enhancing Teaching Presence in Online Courses

abstract: Online education has become increasingly popular in graduate nursing education. Establishing a strong sense of teaching presence in online courses requires planning and effort on the part of the instructor. The purpose of this project was to develop an evidence-based online asynchronous educational module to enhance nurse educators’ teaching presence behaviors in online courses. Teaching presence survey tools were developed and pilot tested to evaluate instructors’ self-reported teaching presence behaviors over time, as well as their intent and actual follow-through in performing teaching presence behaviors. Despite statistically significant higher levels of participants’ intent to perform teaching presence behaviors following the educational module, there was no significant change in the frequency of teaching presence behaviors reported by participants 8 weeks after completion of the module. Overall, the self-reported scores for each of the teaching presence behaviors on the surveys was high, offering little perceived room for improvement in this group of experienced instructors

Big Picture Presence: Bringing Teaching Presence to the Forefront

How does Teaching Presence in online courses aid in the development of enhanced instructor practices? This session will present an overview of business student’s perceptions of good teaching in the online learning environment, focusing on Teaching Presence and the Teaching Presence Components of Design and Organization, Discourse Facilitation and Direct Instruction. A synopsis of the presenter’s qualitative research study will be shared, along with suggested online course guidelines based on the Teaching Presence Model. This presentation will also identify how exemplary faculty demonstrate Teaching Presence in online Business courses, while providing a robust and meaningful exploration of the nature and attributes of Teaching Presence in online courses

The Impact of Social Media Features on Teaching Presence in Communities of Inquiry

We examine which features of social media support teaching presence both in and outside of the classroom. Our findings have implications for both design and practice, showing that parsimonious communication tools (PCTs), liberal communication tools (LCTs), multimedia, and notifications support teaching presence. The affordances of these first two relate to immediacy, and hence, allow teaching presence to be expressed in different ways. Meanwhile, notifications allow for filtering incoming information, and thus, impact teaching presence holistically. Multimedia allows CoI members to embed more content and therefore, also have an overarching effect on teaching presence. The only social media feature noted to be conducive to expressing teaching presence inside of the classroom is PCTs

Online classroom or community-in-the-making? Instructor conceptualizations and teaching presence in international online contexts

The community of inquiry framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) has been an important contribution to the online distance education field and has been useful in providing researchers with the construct of "teaching presence". Teaching presence as described by the framework provides insight into the types of interactions instructors make in online teaching, but is less useful in helping to understand the why’s of instructors’ interactive decisions. In this study, activity theory (Engeström, 1999, 2001) was adopted as a theoretical framework to understand the why’s of teaching presence, revealing a complex negotiation between instructors as subjects and the mediating components of the activity system. The article suggests that a shift to understanding teaching presence within a sociocultural perspective has important implications for teaching and design, as well as the methodologies inherent in the community of inquiry framework. A sociocultural definition of teaching presence is provided in attempt to provide a broader understanding of this construct.Peer reviewedWinner 2011 Best Research Article Awardonline learning; teaching presence; community of inquiry; instructor rol

The Role of Teaching Presence on Academic Achievement in Fully Online Asynchronous and Hybrid Undergraduate Mathematics Courses

This study was designed to investigate how mathematics student perceptions of teaching presence differ by course delivery mode and student achievement. Online learning has had a steady growth in higher education, and mathematics courses are also offered in fully online and hybrid modes, but the research on online mathematics learning and academic achievement is limited. In order to contribute to the body of research in this field, the focus of this study was on teaching presence and academic achievement in two delivery modes: fully online asynchronous, and hybrid. The Community of Inquiry was the theoretical framework of this study, where the three elements, namely: social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence, are interrelated and learning is at the intersection of these main elements (Garrison et al., 2000). This study takes place at a four-year university in South Texas. Participants are students enrolled in fully online or hybrid sections of College Algebra, Math for Liberal Arts, or Elementary Statistics. The Teaching Presence Scale (Shea et al., 2006) is used to collect student perceptions of teaching presence . The results show that mathematics students in hybrid courses perceive their instructors’ teaching presence higher than fully online asynchronous mathematics students, and that there is a statistically significant positive relationship between student perceptions of teaching presence and academic achievement in both course delivery modes. The relationship between student perceptions of each subscale of teaching presence (instructional design and organization, facilitation, and direct instruction) and academic achievement shows that facilitation is the best predictor of academic achievement in fully online asynchronous mathematics courses and instructional design and organization is the best predictor in hybrid mathematics courses. Based on the results of this study, implications and recommendations to improve teaching presence in undergraduate fully online and hybrid mathematics courses are discussed and ideas for future studies in the related field are shared

Adjusting the community of inquiry approach to a synchronous mathematical context

This paper applies the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework previously used in asynchronous discussion forums to synchronous chats in a mathematically-based undergraduate course. While the three presences described in the CoI framework - cognitive, social and teaching presence - are still identified, it is argued that categories and indicators tailored for coding asynchronous discussion may need adjustment when applied to this new context. Preliminary results based on the transcript analysis of one chat log and using two coders are presented in this paper

Online and Face-to-Face Classes: A Comparative Analysis of Teaching Presence and Instructor Satisfaction

Teaching presence is one of three components of the Community of Inquiry Model proposed by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000). This study examined teaching presence, as measured by the instructional design and organization, and directed facilitation (Shea, Li, Swan, and Pickett, 2005), in a large undergraduate science course, contrasting two modes of lecture delivery, face-to-face and online video. Confirmatory factor analysis validated the teaching presence instrument, producing factor loadings similar to Shea et al.\u27s for both online and face-to-face delivery. Analysis of the relationship between instructor satisfaction and teaching presence (instructional design and organization, and directed facilitation) produced a significant (p \u3c 0.05) but relatively weak (r = .50) correlation. Differences between mean instructor satisfaction and teaching presence scores showed no significant differences based on the mode of lecture delivery. Advisor: Allen Steckelber

Factors that promote teaching presence in virtual learning environments

En el presente artículo abordaremos la importancia que tiene la presencia del docente en entornos virtuales de aprendizaje desde un punto de vista de la construcción de aprendizajes. Se resumirá la evolución de los entornos virtuales de aprendizaje, es decir, del eLearning, así como el papel que tiene el docente en dichos entornos. Del mismo modo repasaremos qué entendemos por Presencia Docente, para centrarnos posteriormente en algunos factores que favorecen el desarrollo de la construcción de conocimientos. Para ello, nos referiremos a parte de los resultados obtenidos por la autora en la tesis doctoral del mismo título, centrándonos específicamente en los datos obtenidos en uno de los casos analizados, escogido por su relevancia para este artículoIn this article we will discuss the importance of the Teaching Presence in virtual learning environments from a learning construction point of view. We will summarized the evolution of virtual learning environments, that is, of eLearning, as well as the role of the teacher in such environments. In the same way we will review what we mean by Teaching Presence, to focus later on some factors that favor the development of the construction of knowledge. We will reference part of the results obtained by the author in the doctoral thesis of the same title, focusing specifically on the data obtained in one of the cases analyzed, chosen because of its relevance to this articl

Teaching presence in computer conferencing : lessons from the United States and Australia

This paper uses the category of teaching presence as a framework to analyze and compare teaching presence in two computer conference contexts. Teaching presence is defined as the design, facilitation, and direction of cognitive and social processes. This paper is based on an interview designed to capture reflections about teaching practices of two instructors, one from the United States and the other from Australia. We first present individual case studies of the two computer conference contexts, followed by conclusions and implications for research and practice.<br /