Online Learning Update

March 20, 2012

Online Learning: Managing Instructor Presence and Workload When Creating an Interactive Community of Learners

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:05 am

By: Tammy Stuart Peery and Samantha Streamer Veneruso, Faculty Focus

Increasingly, online learning educators are faced with two key directives that are critical for student success and retention: increasing instructor presence and building a community of learners. All too often, instructors with the best intentions try to implement these concepts by being hyper responsive, trying to maintain as close to a 24/7 presence in the online classroom as possible and responding to each student discussion posting, blog, or wiki.  Others try to meet this need through the use of automated feedback to provide instant canned responses to student work, but this approach can leave students wondering if a “roboteacher” is in charge of the class rather than a real person. Furthermore, “building a community of learners” is often interpreted as a directive to create group projects for the sake of student interaction, even though many teachers groan at the thought of another difficult to manage group project that is time consuming and unpopular with students. Online instructors can avoid these pitfalls and truly reap the benefits of strong presence and building a community if they clearly communicate how and when they will provide feedback to students and design assignments and materials that focus on student interaction from the beginning.

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/balancing-act-managing-instructor-presence-and-workload-when-creating-an-interactive-community-of-learners/

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