Assessing Teaching Presence in a Computer Conferencing Context
Summary:
One of the main themes the authors immediately portray in the article is that teaching presence is multifaceted in that it brings the fundamentals of the community of inquiry together. The purpose of this article is to further reiterate the importance of the complexity of teacher presence in a computer conferencing context. The authors thoroughly describe three categories of Teacher Presence; Design and Organization, Facilitating Discourse and Direct Instruction. Design and Organization is more extensive and time consuming than in a face to face environment. The instructor must be well organized and have a plan. They must outline course and discussion guidelines, timelines, goals and student learning outcomes. The next component is Facilitating Discourse. This incorporates the importance of the teacher’s responsibility in keeping the discussions moving along. The teacher must enthusiastically continue to stimulate the students learning by asking questions, provide thought provoking comments to ensure the students are learning and growing. The third component is Direct instruction: The teacher must provide intellectual leadership (p.8). He/She is responsible to share his/her knowledge and provide valuable resources that will further the students understanding.
Throughout the study, the authors give clear examples of teacher presence and much of the article contains descriptive information about the components of teacher presence. Assessment: The authors compare two Graduate courses in research. They discuss the different teaching approaches; one teacher uses student moderators and the other does not. It is pointed out that although the education teacher does not post as much as the other teacher, the education teachers posts covered more topics and have a higher number of categories of teacher presence.
Critique: These authors immediately create an image that teacher presence incorporates developing a sense of community in the classroom by describing the ‘traditional teacher’ responsibility is not only teacher but lighting the stove and creating warmth in the classroom. This shows the importance of the need of a strong teacher presence in the classroom as well as it assists us in the comprehension that teacher presence as a multi-faceted complex challenge that incorporates, not only the social presence but the organization, design, facilitation, discussion that happens even before the course begins.
This article is well organized and it is divided into topics that make this article easier to read and comprehend. The authors do a great job of providing the reader with various definitions of teacher presence that they obtain from other authors as well they give the reader a clear definition of how they define teacher presence.
Throughout the article, they discuss different aspects of teacher presence including the discussions, organization and facilitation and other aspects of the visible online information. Throughout my reading, I realized the authors failed to mention another important tool used in creating a strong teacher presence that is not readily visible on the general discussion board but is equally important in creating a strong teacher presence; the use of private email that students may receive before the class begin. The ‘Welcome’ Email and the ‘Class Orientation’ email immediately assists the student in developing a sense of belonging to the classroom as assists the student in understanding the goals and objectives of the class. This is an extremely beneficial part of teacher presence. Then in the last page of the article, topic is covered. This brings me to the suggestion for improvement. Teacher presence incorporates not only the activities that pertain to the discussion board but also pertain to the emails and telephone activity that is not readily visible to the researchers. In order to really research Teacher presence in a computer conferencing context all aspects must be thoroughly research and not just mention in a small paragraph on the last page.
One important aspect that the article is missing is the students’ perspective of teaching presence in the two courses that were analyzed. It would be beneficial to question the students about teacher presence. I think it would have given a truer picture of ‘actual teacher presence in both courses, instead of focussing on the number of posts as well as analyzing the number of teacher presence components that were found in the posts. Why not ask the students to define teacher presence in their terms and ask if there was a strong teacher presence in the online course.
Reflection:
I really enjoyed this article because it opened my eyes to the work that is put in by the ‘instructor’ to create a teacher presence in an online format. Teacher presence is not merely showing up online and adding a few random comments. Teacher presence is integrated throughout the online course including before, during and after the course. I read this article before the blended learning class began and although I am reluctant to admit that I was extremely naive in the fact that I didn’t realize the instructor had to do so much work in order to successfully ‘teach’ in an online course. I was under the impression that teaching online was easy and little or no work was involved.
Teaching presence in an online format is multifaceted. It incorporates organization and presentation of material, the curriculum. A good presence in an online environment is challenging and requires the teacher to strategically plan and implement a specialized online curriculum that is different from a face to face curriculum.
I really obtained the ‘whole picture’ of the many stages of teacher presence in the introduction of the article when it compared the one room school teacher’s responsibility to the online teacher’s responsibility. Both teachers were responsible for the direct instruction but were responsible for creating a sense of community and creating a sense of warmth within the class.
Whether it is online or face2face teaching, the students should feel that the classroom is a safe space and that a sense of belonging is creating through a strong teacher presence.
In developing my own blended learning course, I know feel that I truly understand the work and effort that is involved in creating a dynamic online learning environment.
This Article critique is not in proper APA formatting yet.
References:
Anderson, T., Rourke, L., Garrison, D. R., & Archer, W. (2001). Assessing teaching presence in a computer conferencing environment. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 5 (2).
