Description
Until recently, teaching presence, as one of the three elements that comprise Garrison, Anderson & Archer's Community of Inquiry (CoI) model (2000, 2001), has primarily been studied within the context of threaded discussions (Archer, 2010, Shea et al., 2010; Shea, Hayes & Vickers, 2010). As a result there is a need to reexamine the existing dimensions of this construct (Design and Organization, Facilitating Discourse and Direct Instruction) to ascertain whether they represent the full range of instructor activities in an online course. To accomplish this we undertook two complementary methodological approaches.
We used quantitative content analysis to analyze CoI measures of teaching presence to compare two sections of an upper level fully online course in Business management taught by instructors who exhibited very different ways of engaging with their students. Based on preliminary analysis of threaded discussions we found that one instructor had three times the level of teaching presence in threaded discussion compared to the other.
To determine whether this pattern was consistent in other areas of the course we then examined the following data sources: 1) all course communications, including group announcements, private folders for one-to-one instructor-student conversations; public "ask a question" areas, and course e-mail; 2) all instructor feedback and grades; 3) all learning activities, including discussions, a class debate and related group work areas, as well as student artifacts such as individual case studies, research papers and group assignments; 4) all course instructional documents, such as syllabus and orientation materials, as well as module mini-lectures, assignments and instructions. We also revisited the original teaching presence categories by examining other theoretical frameworks, identifying omissions and conflicts identified during the coding process, and assessing the impact of all changes on the overall coherence of the coding scheme (Anderson, Rourke & Garrison, 2001).
Our findings (as reported in Shea, et al., 2010) include the following:
• The majority of instructor teaching presence takes place outside of threaded discussions, the traditional data source for this kind of research
• Current CoI research that focuses solely on threaded discussions has overlooked assessment as a significant category of instructor contribution to teaching presence.
• Design and Organization and Assessment teaching presence indicators far outnumbered those for Facilitating Discourse and Direct Instruction.
What are the practical implications for instructors and course designers?
Using Moore's (1989) and Anderson's (2003; Anderson & Kuskis, 2007) modes of online course interaction (student-teacher, student-student, and student-content) we relate our findings on Design and Organization and the new Assessment category of teaching presence to documented best practices and learning activities.
To enrich the Design and Organization aspects of teaching presence, we explore the following recommendations: using integrative design to develop interconnected learning activities that promote cognitive presence and encourage students to revisit and interact with content presented in other parts of the course; refining rubrics to emphasize higher order thinking over behavioral objectives and promote interactions; and designing for collaborative activities that require students to negotiate meaning and contribute to shared knowledge construction.
To fully leverage the new assessment dimension of teaching presence, we address practical measures to integrate assessment principles into course design through the creation of learning activities that support formative and summative assessment; alternative forms of feedback such as peer review; using newer technologies to convey instructor comments on student work; and the involvement of outside experts. Last, we discuss how instructors can use formative course assessment from students to make real time improvements and how this and summative assessment are valuable inputs to Design and Organization.
Works Cited
Anderson, T. (2003). Getting the mix right again: An updated and theoretical rationale for interaction. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 4(2), 1-14.
Anderson, T. & Kuskis, A. (2007). Modes of interaction. In M. Moore (Ed.) Handbook of Distance Education, 2nd ed. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. (p. 295-308)
Anderson, T., Rourke, L., Garrison, R. D., & Archer, W. (2001). Assessing teaching presence in a computer conferencing context. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 5(2), 1-17.
Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3), 87-105.
Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2001). Critical Thinking and Computer Conferencing: A Model and Tool to Assess Cognitive Presence. American Journal of Distance Education, 15(1), 7-23.
Moore, M. G. (1989). Editorial: Three types of interaction. The American Journal of Distance Education, 3(2), 1-6
Shea, P., Hayes, S., Vickers, J., Gozza-Cohen, M., Uzuner, S., Mehta, R., et al. (2010). A re-examination of the community of inquiry framework: Social network and content analysis. Internet and Higher Education, 13(1-2), 10-21.
Shea, P., Vickers, J. Hayes, S., Gozza-Cohen, M., Uzuner, S., Mehta, R., et al. (2010) Online Instructional Effort Measured Through the Lens of Teaching Presence in the Community of Inquiry Framework: A Re-examination of Measures and Approach. American Educational Research Association Annual meeting, Denver, CO.
