Guest Post: Laresa Trusty

This is a guest post by Laresa Trusty, an instructional designer at Texas A&M-Central Texas. Would you like to contribute to IDeaBook? Contact me at t_b246@txstate.edu. 

Imagine for a moment that you are a student starting a new class with a professor you have never met and know nothing about.  You walk into the classroom and all of your instructions are written on the whiteboard, but no one is there. As a first impression, this might instill fear, bewilderment, and anxiety! Imagine that the whole semester is carried out this way.  The likelihood that a student would complete the semester, much less meet the learning objectives, is very slim. They would spend all their resources trying to decipher what is expected and how to navigate the course.  Well, I would suggest that a new student starting an online course for the first time would feel much the same way, possibly with even more anxieties.  Maybe they are not very tech savvy? Maybe they have heard from others that this class is too difficult and impossible to earn a good grade? But the presence of an instructor can mitigate or even eliminate these challenges.

Instructor Presence

So, what exactly is instructor presence? Simply put, it is about intentionally demonstrating that you, as the instructor, are present and actively involved in the course. Plenty of research exists that supports and defines the benefits of instructor presence within an online course.

In current research, there are some interesting things to consider.

Five distinct roles instructors have in exhibiting instructor presence:

• Advocating
• Facilitating
• Sense making
• Organizing
• Maintaining

These five roles provide a lot of varied opportunities for an instructor to make their presence known.  An instructor that focuses on only one or two roles, may not maintain desirable instructor presence. (Richardson, Besser, Caskurlu, 2015)

• Humans are social creatures and that interactions relieve anxiety. As mentioned in the beginning, relieving anxiety for the student to be able to focus on their coursework is a very valid reason that instructor presence is important for improved student performance. The study surveyed students and found that they perceived peer and instructor presence as both important, but instructor presence was deemed more important. Student learning outcomes do not differ in an online course (versus a traditional face-to-face course) if instructor presence is addressed. (Kennette, Redd, 2015)
• Instructor presence is important to students in all modalities. Ranked the most important were communicating clear expectations, helping students stay on track, and providing timely feedback. In addition, course satisfaction and instructor presence are related. (Cutsinger, Wall, Tapps, 2018)
• Instructor facilitation is especially important with timely response to questions submitted by students and feedback on assignments, and encouragement to engage in the course. (Martin, Wang, Sadaf, 2018)

 What are some strategies to increase instructor presence?

Some of the suggested ways to enhance instructor presence in the course were:

Students rated the items in bold as highly important in Martin, Wang, Sadaf, 2018.

• Introduction video for the instructor and the students,
• Instructor availability in multiple ways
• Quick response to questions
• Regular course announcements
• Instructor created content videos
• Being present in discussion forum
• Timely feedback in various modalities
• Instructor’s response to student reflections
• Discussion forum for questions that is monitored and responded to daily
• Online office hours (WebEx, Zoom, etc.)

(Martin, Wang, Sadaf, 2018)

Conclusion

So what is the purpose of this post? Just a gentle reminder of how much a little bit goes a long way in a student’s online journey. And maybe to encourage you to investigate the current literature discussing instructor presence. Research literature demonstrates that students really do want the course instructor to be present, available, and responsive. Tips and tricks abound on recommendations for the best way to achieve that goal!

References

Cutsinger, M.  M., Wall, T. J., & Tapps, T. (2018). Differences of instructor presence levels in predominately online versus predominantly not online courses within the community college setting (Links to an external site.). Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 21(2), 1–16.

Kennette, L. N., & Redd, B. R. (2015). Instructor Presence Helps Bridge the Gap between Online and On-Campus Learning (Links to an external site.). College Quarterly, 18(4).

Martin, F., Wang, C., Sadaf, A. (2018). Student perception of helpfulness of facilitation strategies that enhance instructor presence, connectedness, engagement and learning in online courses (Links to an external site.). The Internet and Higher Education, 37(2018), 52-65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2018.01.003 (Links to an external site.)

Richardson, J. C., Koehler, A. A., Besser, E. D., Caskurlu, S., Lim, J., & Mueller, C. M. (2015). Conceptualizing and investigating instructor presence in online learning environments (Links to an external site.). The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 16(3). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v16i3.2123 (Links to an external site.)