Communication with Students

• Individualized emails
  • For example, emailing students who have not logged into the Canvas course site at the beginning of the term and messaging students who have missed assignments later in the term.
• Instructor-facilitated discussions
  • Consider periodic discussion forums asking students to apply what they are learning to their personal life experiences.
• Scheduled virtual office hours
• Instructor-facilitated annotated readings
• Student surveys at mid-term, after a major project, or at the end of the term encourage student reflection that can help you make necessary adjustments
• Announcements about course content or assignments posted on a regular schedule
  • Consider scheduling announcements on a specific day and time and communicate that in your syllabus or welcome message.

Directing student learning

• Personalized and targeted feedback on assignments. Consider using audio or video feedback as well as written feedback.
  • Feedback should be meaningful, both to validate good student work and to suggest work that could be improved.
• Posting discussion questions and actively monitoring the discussion, clarifying or redirecting as needed. Consider using Hypothesis or Perusall for discussions and actively engage with students.
• Inviting a student to visit you during office hours to discuss their overall progress or providing feedback on a specific course activity.
• Providing alternative office hours near mid-term or finals to encourage students who might not be able to visit regular office hours otherwise.

The Human Element

• Are you reaching out to all students at least once during the course? This can be individually or through small group feedback.
• Are you messaging students who may need personalized help? Doing so during high-impact moments like near mid-term or after important assignments is most effective.
• Are you establishing a regular, predictable rhythm with your announcements and feedback timelines?

Frequent

• Set a pattern early on with your students regarding when they can expect feedback on assignments.
• Establish a schedule of announcements so students know when to look for new content and/or feedback.

Consistent

• Let students know when they can expect to have feedback on assignments and projects in your syllabus and in your welcome message.
  • For example, "Assignments are due Sunday night by 9pm. I will begin grading your work on Monday and all feedback and grades will be posted by Wednesday evening at 6pm."
• Let students know when you'll be sending out weekly overview announcements or updating your home page.
  • Be sure to let students know in advance if there will be any change in your set announcement schedule.
• Let students know if there are periods of time when you will not be able to respond to messages.
  • For example, if you do not respond to emails on the weekend, let students know at the beginning of the term and remind them, if necessary, during the term.

• Do students know when to expect feedback and what to do if they have questions about their grades?
• Do students know when there may be a delay in your responses to email messages?
• Have you posted your office hours in a way that students can find them quickly?

Post Announcements Strategically

• Post examples of how a real world situation relates to course content.
• Consider weekly announcements that introduce that week's concepts and how they connect with previous content.

Engage Students with Discussions

• Invite students to post their own real world experiences with assigned content in a discussion forum.
• Collect responses to discussion posts with a digest that addresses trends, extends applications students made to course content, and connects work explored in discussions to other activities and assignments.
• For large enrollment classes, consider dividing discussion forums into groups, assigning roles for group members to take on to deepen discussion.

Provide Assignment Guidance

• Post examples of how current events relate to assigned content. Provide a Q&A or "Ask a Question" forum for student-to-student questions about assignment expectations.
• Monitor this forum regularly to reinforce ideas and provide any necessary clarifications or redirection.
• Consider preparing a "student details" document at the start of the term to document any student learning styles, research interests, or concerns students share with you through a "get to know you" survey. Reference relevant details as part of your evaluative feedback.

• Where are there opportunities to connect what students are learning in your class to current events throughout the course?
• Are there places in the course where you can invite student experience that connects with content?

Be Present & Authentic

• Make an introduction video to let students know who you are.
  • Videos do not have to be perfect: a few stumbles and "ums" show that you're human.
• Model engagement in discussions thoughtfully and with respect.
• Let your passion for the subject shine through in all your course interactions.

Be Organized

• Make sure your course is easy to navigate.
• Be certain that all assignment instructions are clear.
• Organize modules, readings, and resources in ways that scaffold the learning of complex concepts.

Help Make Connections

• Locate points of confusion or major concepts that need to be reiterated and address clarifications to the class as a whole.
• Find places to help learners connect the material to their own lives.
• Use discussions/assignments to connect students to each other, to the content, and to you.

The Human Element

• Do you introduce yourself to the students?
• Does your personality come through in your course?
• How do you exhibit your passion for the course and/or the subject?
• Do you display how the course content has personal meaning or connections for you?
• Do you model the skills you expect from your students with both interactions and analysis?

Course Design & Organization

• Is your course design intuitive and consistent? 
• Is it easy to navigate?
• Are all activity instructions clear, explicit, and concise?
• Is your feedback timely and supportive?
• Do students know how to contact you with time-sensitive questions?
• Do you curate your course effectively by selecting and arranging readings, videos, and other resources to scaffold concepts?

Facilitation

• Do students know how they are expected to participate?
• How and when do you contribute to the conversation?
• Do you use students’ names when you respond to them?
• Do you post announcements, discussions, and other feedback that aggregate student discoveries and ideas as common patterns?

Video Transcript: Teaching Presence in Online Classes – with David McCormick and Sasha

Welcome to this video on teaching presence in online courses, where we showcase one instructor's strategies for designing, organizing and facilitating his course, in order to engage students in the learning - by creating a sense of connection and community. Teaching Presence is one facet of the Community of Inquiry Model, a theoretical framework created by Garrison, Anderson and Archer that represents the process of creating deep and meaningful learning experiences, through the development of three interdependent elements: Social, Cognitive, and Teaching Presence. Teaching Presence is that unique and personal element that you bring to the course, which helps build a deeper connection with your learners. In face-to-face courses, this occurs naturally through physical presence and teacher immediacy. In online education, however, this presence is dependent on course design and organization, facilitation of online dialog, well-focused direct instruction, and how you convey your passion and personality.

There are many simple ways to create teaching presence. Today, we are going to give you a peek inside a UO course that has a strong and singular teaching presence. We interviewed David McCormick, the faculty member who created this course, and talk about ways that you can create your own unique teaching presence that is true to your subject and your authentic self. Without further ado, let's meet David and his beloved colleague, Sasha.

My name is David McCormick. I'm the Director of the Institute of Neuroscience here at the University of Oregon. And this is Sasha, my sidekick. She's a Samoyed. She's nine years old. She's been with me for the eight of those nine years. Yeah, we're we're very much a part of the University of Oregon now. I'm also a faculty fellow at the Unthank Hall and we're often over there. So, if you ever see us around, just stop and say hello.

Tell us about your course.

I teach Biology 170, which is a class on happiness. Actually, it's called Happiness: A Neuroscience and Psychology Perspective. It's taught both in-person and online. I created this course to teach students life skills and positive life engagement.

When I was thinking about the material that I was going to present on life skills and happiness, I realized that I needed a kind of a unique teaching style. And I looked around a little bit and I came across one called Head-Heart-Hands. And the Head, Heart, Hands Model is simply intellectual learning, emotional development, and putting things into action/doing. And that's exactly how the course is designed. There's the, you know, facts and figures parts of the material... there is trying to engage the students in an emotional way... and you can do that by getting them to relate to their personal experiences by having them watch videos that draw out the emotional aspects of life engagement and so on. And then the action part is activities where, every week, we have the students do activities to put the lessons into practice.

How does Sasha fit into the course?

Well, you know, the Head, Heart, Hands Model is, as I said, intellectual, emotional, and action. So, I realized that I should develop a style that was conducive to, you know, a sense of life skills, well-being and putting into practice the things I was talking about in class. So, I thought, "well, how can I do that?" And one of those was... dogs. Everybody has... well, not everybody, but a lot of people have dogs. A lot of students have dogs. They miss their dogs. And from my practice of walking around campus with Sasha, I realized that it's kind of an immediate connection to that personal aspects of life, you know? Having a dog... petting a dog... And also an immediate connection to the emotional part. You know, a dog kind of brings out the the softness in us, the connection and the ability to be vulnerable, if you will. And so I thought, well, if I bring Sasha into the course, both in-person and online, that that would really help me make that connection to people.

Why did you choose to teach the course online?

With online teaching, you can reach students that you couldn't reach in person. I have a lot of students that couldn't come to campus - maybe they became ill or someone in their family became ill or they had to take a trip, or maybe they just want to do distance learning. Those students I could reach with the material. It made it very nice to have the course both online and in person, because there's a lot of flexibility there that I never appreciated. So, when students in person all of a sudden had an emergency or became ill - maybe they got COVID - they could just watch the lectures online and do the online version. So, I found it actually very beneficial to have the online version of the course as well as the in-person.

Why did you choose to include your outdoor activities in your lecture videos?

You know, one of the big problems with an online course versus an in-person course is having some type of way to relate to the students because you're just talking to your computer or you talking to a camera. And so, the dog helps, really. But I also wanted to exhibit both positive life skills and get the students to relate to me. So, all I did was just... wherever I went in Oregon: snowshoeing, hiking, biking, visiting a vineyard or the Oregon Raptor Center... I would just pull out my phone and interview someone. "Hey, what makes you happy?" Or I would just talk about the location I was at and film it. I keep it short, you know, to keep it kind of TikTok-video-like, you know, just a couple of minutes to kind of entertain the students for a little bit before we get into the content of the lecture. I really felt that that was a way to make a connection with the students even though they're watching a video. They're used to watching videos like TikTok's, Instagram Snippets, YouTube and so on. So, I tried to make something interesting for them to kind of engage them in the material first.

How do you film your videos?

Well, when we did the videos around different parts of Oregon, sometimes I did it by myself just with my phone and propped it up somewhere and held it. But often my wife was helping me out. And, you know, just using basic photography methods, keep the phone very steady, move it very slowly, keep everything centered well and maybe do a couple of different takes so that if one didn't work, the other one did. Yeah. And then when I'm making a lecture video, I was usually by myself, with Sasha by my side sometimes... usually, or in the background, like, for example, on my picnic table in my backyard was done by using my MacBook Pro. It has a very good high-resolution camera on it, and I used a podcast microphone, a Yeti, and I might use an Astro Pad, which allows your iPad to be a drawing device. I set those up on my picnic table... it would take, you know once you're used to it, only a few minutes to set it up.

What feedback have you received from students about the course?

I.. ah [laugh].. yeah, they love it..the course... and they say more, more, more. You know, "why don't we have more courses like this?" The course started out about 80 students, then it went to one hundred and thirty students in the next term, the next year. It's gone to two hundred and seventy students. The next year I am opening up to five hundred students. It's gotten.. and it's got 100 percent approval rating.

There's almost no student that says they don't highly recommend this course to another student. And I asked them, "Why do they like this course so much?" A) They like the content. They said that, you know, this is something I can actually use. I can use these life skills throughout my life.  B) They like the design of the course. They like that it's engaging. It's at an open level that they can easily participate in. They love Sasha being in the videos. It helps them relate. They love the level at which I converse with them. I'm not talking down to them. I'm talking even with them, like person to person. And they love that. They love that their input is appreciated and desired. They have a chance to influence the course of the course. You know, I ask a lot of questions like "What things do we not cover that you would like to cover?" And I've learned that a conversation with them, even in a larger class where they feel like they have the opportunity to be individually heard and appreciated, which they do in my course, because we give a lot of individual attention when they want, it really helps them absorb the material and appreciate it.

Can you walk us through the structure of the course and how you designed it?

So basically, the course is designed in modules, there's 17 modules, and each module has multiple components. One of the components is the lectures. So, the [in-person] lectures are an hour and 20 minutes long because they're based on real life lecture classes. So, you can't watch an hour and 20 minute video, it's just too, too long, need breaks. So, I broke those into three or four segments of like 20 minutes each. And when I when I put in a real life element like…you could go to this place for a hike or you can go here for a bike ride... I did that only at the beginning of the set of lectures, so at the beginning of the module, and that was because I didn't want it to be... I wanted it to be a special treat to watch something outside the classroom as opposed to something that was happening all the time. It was just... 'Hey, let's.. we're getting started today on this topic... but first, here's an interesting place you could visit in Oregon or interesting thing you could do that's relevant in some way to the material.'

What advice would you give to other instructors about developing Teaching Presence in an online course?

Well, you know...I learned it actually in courses in-person, but I tried to extend it to online learning, which is that the students pick up on your vibe. They pick up on your enthusiasm for the material and how clearly you relate and present the material. So, students are drawn to an engaged, enthusiastic, interesting story, right? It's all about storytelling. So, if you can make your lecture, your 20-minute lecture or something, a story...you tell them where you're gonna go, tell them the material, tell them where you've been in this storyline that you're clearly very interested in and engaged about, I think it makes the the whole experience a lot better for the students.

Do you have any advice for instructors new to recording videos?

Yeah. I think that, you know, being present yourself, being enthusiastic, as I just said, be enthusiastic about the material, being engaged with the material both intellectually and emotionally, being invested in the material and conveying that, is the top thing you should do. You know, throwing in something about your personal life, how you relate to the material. You know, showing the students...let them see some of your your situation, maybe your yard or where you sit and read for classes or for your research or whatever, or your home office. You know, mix it up a little bit. I think interjecting some kind of relatedness of yourself to to the students can really help the coursework and the lectures to be interesting. Yeah. The best way to do that, I think, is to be really comfortable with the online presence. And so, I would say that... make a surrounding that's comfortable to you. I use my outdoor patio or my office at home because I'm very comfortable in those locations. Maybe do some deep breathing or some relaxation before you make the video. Maybe you could practice the video. You could do it a couple of times and then watch yourself and then realize it's not so scary. And another idea is to have someone on the other side of the computer that you're talking to. Like, it could be a student that's helping you out make the videos until you get really practiced at it, or it could be your spouse or significant other. So, make it a human element as opposed to just you talking to a machine. I think that bringing in that human element, that kind of vulnerability, that availability, really can help the students relate to you as a person and you as a teacher.

Thank you, David and Sasha.

We hope you enjoyed this video on teaching presence in online courses. For more information on the other two facets of the Community of Inquiry Model - Social and Cognitive Presence - Visit teaching.uoregon.edu/COI.

Blooper Reel:

[jaunty music]

I'm trying to get some of this.... [removes dog hair from sweater] Can you give me a kiss? Thank you. Okay, yeah [laughs] [grunts] Okay, there you go. Where you gonna settle, huh? [Sasha barks] You gotta be quiet, okay? I know...that's the thing... [removes dog hair from sweater] You holding my hand? [Sasha puts paw up on David’s arm] Thank you. Can you say 'thank you,' Sasha? Yeah? Okay? [Sasha licks David] Good [laughing]