Teaching presence in online education: From the instructor’s point of view

Abstract

Most often the topic of creating presence in online education is viewed from the student perspective (Oztok & Brett, 2011). The purpose of this mixed methods research was to look at the creation of teaching presence from the vantage point of a lone ranger instructor (Anderson, 2004). Based on data collected from student grades, student-instructor communication, and course evaluations, the researcher/instructor set out to determine if creating a greater sense of teaching presence was a worthwhile investment of her time and energy. Over the course of three semesters, the researcher/instructor incorporated various techniques to create a greater sense of teaching presence in one of two simultaneously occurring graduate assessment courses. There was minimal evidence from this study that demonstrated that creating a greater sense of teaching presence in the online classroom was an effective use of the instructor’s time and efforts. It was also determined that instructors play a key role in the creation and facilitation of the learning process, but it is likely more important for the instructor to simply be available for students through a well-structured course as opposed to creating a presence of oneself in the online classroom.