Increasing Online Faculty Virtual Presence in the E-Classroom by Exemplifying the Desired Behavior

Students who participate in traditional face-to-face courses have the opportunity to participate in a number of informal social interactions with their instructors and classmates. However, these important social interactions do not always translate into the virtual classroom, leaving students to feel that they are missing out on the social interactions offered by the traditional classroom and searching for other means to establish relationships. A widespread problem in the online environment is that many instructors in this setting struggle with modeling active engagement in the class. Students know and expect that a virtual classroom is always open and they count on being able to e-see their instructors in the classroom every time they log in. Online instructors need to set up their presence through the growth of an energetic classroom, utilizing tactics that increase and highlight their visibility in the course. With the development of highly interactive technologies, increasing an instructor's virtual presence in the classroom has never been easier. During this interactive workshop, participants will learn how two distance learning administrators motivated and encouraged their remote faculty to leave behind the anonymity of the virtual classroom and project their presence into every "corner" of the classroom. The first phase of this effort has yielded: 1) increased communication (social and formal) between distance faculty and their deans, 2) increased media content in course shells, and 3) increased participation of distance faculty curriculum and course development. Participants attending this workshop will be exposed to the different tools the presenters used to motivate their faculty in embracing their virtual presence. Additionally, all participants will be provided with handouts containing links to the different tools used during this presentation.