Instructor Presence and Persona Important in the Virtual World

The landscape of learning is changing, from a pure face to face classroom environment to one that exists in both the virtual and physical worlds. How can instructors, trained to teach in the traditional face to face classroom adjust to online learning? Are the skills they use today in the physical classroom easily transferable to online learning? Or is the pedagogy so different, that a complete retraining is necessary? Do we really need instructors, or as some believe, can we rely only on technology to teach students in the future?

Online learning is on the rise in the United States, with nearly twenty percent of college students enrolled in at least one online course. Technology supplies the central meeting place where interactions, socialization and learning can occur. It does not, however, create these interactions. The instructor plays this pivotal role. This is no different than traditional face to face learning where one would look at the building and the classrooms within and say, “There, that’s all we need, no instructor necessary.”

The skills and roles traditional instructors use in face to face environments, where the learning is teacher-centered, are different than those in online learning. Learning online is more learner-centered with the roles instructors play changing to facilitator, social director, program manager and technologist. Students experience their instructors in these various roles through course design, course content and communications. The impact of instructor presence and persona in the online world is profound. Without effective instructor presence and persona online, students are left adrift in a world of isolation and disconnection.

So how can instructors create a rich interactive environment where students feel connected and engaged in the learning? Let’s look at three student/instructor/technology intersections and how they impact interaction, social presence and ultimately knowledge construction. The first intersection is the structure of the online material, as it is laid out in the learning management system. A well laid out class gives structure to the learning and portrays the instructor as competent, caring, invested and organized. It has the ability to reduce learner anxiety and increase student satisfaction. The second intersection is in instructor introduction and initial student connection. In the absence of a physical instructor, instructors must establish a sense of “being”. This initial introduction gives students an insight into who will be guiding their learning experience and in the end, providing assessment of their work. These interactions help shape how engaged and invested the instructor is in their learning. The third intersection is with discussion boards. From a technological perspective, they are simply a communication tool that allows for conversations to be threaded in chronological order and for postings to be grouped by subtopic. The presence of a discussion board alone does not create interactions of a social or learning nature, but rather these interactions spring from the assignments and exercises created and facilitated by the instructor within this tool, as well as the participation of the students. Instructors should take a middle ground when facilitating online discussions for maximum student interaction, neither dominating the conversation as expert lecturer nor at the other extreme, absent and distant. As facilitators, instructors work to deepen the learning and enrich the experience of students. Since the goal is learner-centered learning, the facilitating techniques should promote interaction amongst students, encouraging discussion through positive, timely feedback, prompting, open-ended questions to deepen the discussion, and gentle redirection when the discussion begins to go off-track. This stance moves the instructor to more of a co-learner position.

Teaching online can be challenging for those facing a transition from the face to face paradigm. Traits such as shyness or stage fright may no longer be an issue online. Instructors with great physical classroom presence may struggle when interactions move to the virtual world. There is no guarantee that an effective face to face instructor will succeed online just as there is no guarantee that an ineffective face to face instructor will not. The online environment is vastly different, but with proper training, insight and care, the chances for success increase. For some, this may be their first real teacher education, which serves everyone in the long run. We see that technology is not the do-all/end-all, but rather the framework that supports the learning. It is instead the learning environment created by the instructor that promotes learning: how the instructor builds this world matters, how they behave in it matters, how the students perceive them in it matters. Just as with face to face teaching, teacher presence and persona matters, and in a world where physicality is missing, it is even more important.