I was asked to present on teaching presence in online environments for a small conference of teachers in the Masters of E-Elearning program at Universitat Oberta de Catalonia.

1. Enhancing Teaching Presence
and Effectiveness
Terry Anderson, Ph.D.
terrya@athabascau.ca

2. Athabasca University,
Alberta, Canada
* Athabasca University
34,000 students, 700 courses
100% distance education
Graduate and
Undergraduate programs
Master & Doctorate
Distance Education
Only USA Regionally
Accredited University
in Canada
*Athabasca
University

3. Components of the Community of Inquiry Model Garrison & Anderson, 2001

4. COI Overview

5. Social Presence
From Social Presence to Transactional Presence to Net Presence
Garrison (2009) Social Pres. as “the ability of participants to
identify with the community (e.g., course of study),
communicate purposefully in a trusting environment, and
develop inter-personal relationships by way of projecting their
individual personalities.” (p. 352).
TransactionalPres. « the degree to which a distance
studentperceives the availability of, and connectednesswith,
teachers, peerstudents, and institution” (Shin, 2002: 132).
Allows for use in self-paced learning
Social presence confounded with multi-disciplinary perspectives

6. Teaching Presence
Defined as: The design, facilitation and direction of
cognitive and social processes for the purpose of
realizing personally meaningful and educational
worthwhile learning outcomes.
Built upon the familiar models of Moore, Holmberg,
Paulsen, and Mason, however provide ways to
measure the construct.

7. Teaching Presence
The transcript analysis allows researcher to
disaggregate the roles
Instructional designer and activity organizer
Discourse facilitator
Subject matter expert
Especially critical in computer conferencing (asynch
text) based education systems
Major cause of course breakdown.

8. Instructional Design
Enhancing course with additional resources
YouTube videos
OERs
MOOCs and Khan Academy
Student submitted resources
Student created resources:
Past assignments
Portals and Wikipedia articles
Learn.ist

10. http://learni.st/category/10-education

11. Connectivist Learning
Persistence
Accessibility
Network
Effects
“Connectivying” your course
http://terrya.edublogs.org/2012/12/18/connectivy-your-course/

12. Facilitating Discourse
Right size of sub-group
Right kind of questions
Right number of questions
Right quantity of Interventions
Using students as discussion leaders
Video and Audio enhancements
VoiceThread
Using Synchronous sessions

13. https://voicethread.com/?#u316369

14. Teaching Presence –
Subject Matter Expert
Keeping current yourself
Developing your professional networks
Filtering ideas and solutions
Your blog
Subscribing to Journals – notably www.irrodl.org
Reading Free Books from AU Press aupress.ca
Great educational Twitter feeds

15. Teaching presence
in a Life Long Learning Era
Learners of today “used to work for someone else,
but will increasingly work for themselves and instead
of serving as functionaries in the achievement of
purposes set by others, they will increasingly set
purposes for themselves”
Richard Sampson, 2005

16. COI meets Web 2.0
 How much does social presence increase in
synchronous activities
 Does adding voice (auidoconferencing) graphics
(web conferencing), pictures (video), virtual
environment (immersion) significantly increase
social presence?
 Are the resulting limitations on access worth social
and pedagogical gains?
 When is too much social presence damaging?

17. Learner Assessment
Authentic assessment “the measurement of
"intellectual accomplishments that are worthwhile,
significant, and meaningful”Wehlage, Newmann, &Secada,
1996, p. 23
See http://youtu.be/c_gibuFZXZw
E-Portfolios
https://portfolio.elab.athabascau.ca/view/view.php?id=
2822

19. Assessment Voice Marking using Adobe Connect
Ice, P., Curtis, R., Phillips, P., & Wells, J. (2007). Using Asynchronous Audio Feedback to
Enhance Teaching Presence and Students’ Sense of Community. Journal of Asychronous
Learning Network, 11(2)

20. Net
Presence
Goodier, S., &Czerniewicz, L. (2013). Academics’ online presence: A four-step guide to taking control of your visibility.
University of Capetown. http://openuct.uct.ac.za/sites/default/files/Online%20Visibility%20Guidelines.pdf.

21. What Type of Networked Academic Persona
Have you Created?
Barbour, K., & Marshall, D. (2012). The academic online: Constructing persona through
the World Wide Web. First Monday, 17(9).
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3969/3292.

22. Academia.edu, FaceBook,
LinkedIn, Landing

23. Beyond the LMS
Social networking in a boutique network
https://Landing. athabascau.ca

24. Walled Gardens (with
windows)
Connectivist learning thrives in safe learning spaces
with windows allowing randomness, external
participation and public presentation

25. What is the Landing?
A private space for Athabasca University –
students, staff, alumni
A public place for sharing knowledge
A user controlled creative space
Boutique social network
Networking, blogging, photos,
microblogging, polls, calendars, groups
and more
Built on elgg.org platform

29. Landing Provides
User control
Personal Learning Environment
Persistence

30. Conclusions
COI most widely quoted heuristic and research theory in
online learning
Need to use new tools to enhance cognitive, social and
teaching presence
Does it speak to learning in your course contexts?
Is it a useful tool for education development and research?
Your comments and questions, please
Terry Anderson terrya@athabascau.ca
Blog: terrya.edublogs.org

31. Why low rate of problem resolution in
Cognitive Presence?
Instructional design- no problem to resolve
Poor teacher guidance/assessment
Resolution reflected in final papers/exams or case studies – not
in online discussion
Artificial context of formal learning- no space for real
application
Poor instrumentation or model
Online asynch discussion is not powerful enough to support full
cognitive presence
Takes too much time