Is Anyone There?
Hello and welcome to the AEA
PD Online’s first “Friday Feature”.
AEA PD Online will be
hosting a series called Friday Feature
twice a month. The goal of the Friday Feature is to highlight things AEA PD Online
does, as well as provide information about online teaching and learning.
So, let’s talk about instructor presence in an online
course. If you have ever been a student in an online course, you may have
experienced differing levels of instructor presence—depending on the course,
the topic, the instructor, etc. Maybe the only interaction you experienced with
the instructor was getting your grade. Or, maybe the instructor was engaged in
conversations with you as an individual, and/or with the class as a whole through
discussion forums, chats, emails, announcements, etc. Which instructor do you
prefer? How do you know if the instructor is present?
Instructor presence is one
of the factors that many online students comment on most often in course
evaluations. What is instructor presence? Since students don’t physically “see”
the instructor, a sense of instructor presence is created through the way the
course is designed and delivered. Video chats for virtual office hours, photos,
narratives, a welcoming video introduction—all easy things to create—can
provide students with an “image” of who the instructor is in their online
course. Instructors need to spend a little bit of time, before the course
begins, setting up the classroom online environment.
Once the course is in
session, online instructors can add announcements, post to discussion boards,
provide feedback on assignments, upload photos or videos, email students—both
individually and to the class as a whole—all of which will provide “evidence of
engagement” to online students.
Online instructors can also
directly ask students for feedback throughout the course. Feedback can be
anonymous. For example, at the end of a unit you might ask, “Was this
information clear, or were there any points you didn’t understand?”
Face-to-face teachers do this all the time—so can online instructors. Online
instructors can also ask questions specifically about their role as an
instructor, such as:
·
Is the
timeliness of my response helpful?
·
Are the types of
responses you are getting helpful?
·
Is there
anything else I could be doing to help you?
If you, as in online
instructor, ask for student feedback, then you also had better be ready to
respond to it, and you may even want to implement some of their suggestions in
the current online course.
So—what tools can you use to
help create this sense of instructor presence? The use of audio and video can
be easily incorporated into an online course. Moodle has some built-in tools
that can be used by both students and instructors—it is called “PoodLL”.
Using PoodLL, online
instructors and their students can:
·
Record Audio: Record your voice or other audio input and
save it directly into an MP3 file.
·
Record Video: Record video into assignments,
questions…anywhere!
·
Draw Pictures & Diagrams: Draw or snap pictures and save
them using PoodLL's online whiteboard application.
·
Use Cool Widgets: PoodLL includes Stopwatches, flashcards,
dice, timers and more to help your students master certain types of
information.
·
Use most of the features with
mobile devices: HTML5 compatibility means PoodLL activities will work well
with many mobile phones & tablets.
Want to see what it is all
about?
1. Go to http://moodlesw.aeapdonline.org/.
2. Log into Moodle.
3. In the Go To
Course panel, (left side of window), type in the course number, 5.
4. Click on the Audio and Video tab in order to view
the tutorials and get student directions for submitting audio/video
assignments
In the Spotlight
A new, self-paced course, Social Media for the Classroom,
is now available.
This course explores various social media tools—Twitter,
Facebook, Instagram, Google+, and Pinterest. Teachers/educators can get 1
license renewal credit for only $60.00!
And, because it is self-paced, you can take it on your own
schedule—no worries about start and end dates—begin when it is convenient for
you, finish as your schedule allows.
Peggy Steinbronn, Ed.D.
AEA PD Instructional Designer
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