Developing teaching presence in online learning through shared stakeholder responsibility

Abstract

Online learning is a contemporary learning environment common in post-secondary education (Allen & Seaman, 2013). There are various components that contribute to successful online learning stakeholders. From the Community of Inquiry framework, there are three important considerations for developing effective online learning environments: cognitive presence, social presence and teaching presence. One of the three presences, teaching presence is “thoughtful, focused and attentive” (Garrison, Cleveland-Innes & Fung, 2010, p. 32) and responsible for the balance of student learning needs through developing and maintaining social and cognitive processes (Garrison, 2011). As identified by Garrison (2011), “teaching presence represents perhaps a greater challenge in an e-learning environment” (Garrison, 2011, p. 25). Qualitative evidence suggests that teaching presence supports learner sense of community through meaningful participation, increases learner satisfaction through careful design of the learning experiences, and maintains the development of cognitive and social processing (Szeto, 2015). Therefore, to better enable instructor understanding of teaching presence, this poster presentation outlines the critical development process for creating effective teaching presence in the online learning environment. Specifically, we visually describe and outline four elements: preparing the stakeholders, designing the facilitation, implementing the facilitation and evaluating the facilitation. Together these components address the innovative learning practices necessary for developing teaching presence in the online learning environment through shared stakeholder responsibility.