Strategies for Instructor Presence


Social presence is “the degree to which a person is perceived as a ‘real person’ in mediated communication” (Gunawardena, 1995, p.151). In our case we are referring to the instructor's presence in an online course. I have been reading a variety of resources on the topic and have found that research shows that instructor (social) presence correlates with:

• increased learner satisfaction,
• a greater depth of learning,
• increased perception of learning, and
• a sense of belonging to a community.

Listed below are some strategies you can incorporate, if you are not already doing so, to increase your presence.

1. Post a welcome announcement; share your enthusiasm about the topic; set a positive tone
2. Be real; Share your bio, include a photo; interact with students and participate in icebreaker/intro activity; write a personalized introduction
3. Be available; Make it easy for students to contact you if they need to (but let them know your boundaries); encourage them to contact you if needed;
   a. Offer virtual office hours
   b. Create an FAQ forum in the discussion area.
4. Be yourself; speak from the heart; show care
5. Provide timely and constructive feedback; positive affirmation;
6. Motivate and inspire! Include weekly announcements that provide general feedback, summaries, commentaries, and/or encouragement.
7. Acknowledge diversity and the experience your students bring to the course.
   a. Share your real world experiences and perspectives to a topic by including weekly summaries or commentaries to a topic. Your students will have diverse backgrounds and experiences as well; respect and encourage them to share their stories as they relate to the topics.
8. Support your students! Maintain a nurturing pace of responding.
9. Be flexible. There may be times when your students are not able to meet deadlines, be understanding and flexible with their circumstances. Be open to flexibility with specific projects or assignments where a student may be able to customize it to make it more meaningful or practical to their career.
10. Connect and personalize; Use of conversational style in communications from instructor to students – use of names, discussions of personal context, use of emoticons. :) ;)
11. Foster community and collaboration
    a. Use “we” and “us”; “We are all in this together; Let us work together”
12. Model the behavior and practice what you expect from your students.

Gunawardena, C. N. (1995). “Social presence theory and implications for interaction and collaborative learning in computer conferences.” International Journal of Educational Telecommunications, 1(2/3), 147-166.

Gunawardena, C., and Zittle, F., (1997). Social presence as a predictor of satisfaction within a computer-mediated conferencing environment. The American Journal of Distance Education, 1(3), 8-26

Muirhead, B. (2002). Promoting Online Interaction in Today's Colleges and Universities. , 16(7). Retrieved from http://www.usdla.org/html/journal/JUL02_Issue/article04.html.

Different Ways to use Acrobat Connect

Acrobat Connect Professional software provides interactive tools to help you create a ‘virtual presence’ for interacting with colleagues and students.

· Cameras provide a face to face meeting with audio capability
· Files can be downloaded and shared
· Power Point presentations can be delivered
· Computer screens can be shared to access and work on projects
· Sessions can be recorded for future viewing or to send to others for their viewing.

In a ground based classroom setting, students can see and hear you and know that you are there and are responding to their questions and comments. You can see the students and can gauge by both their verbal and nonverbal feedback whether they are grasping concepts and getting their questions answered. Teaching online is different than teaching face-to-face. In an online class environment you cannot see nor hear the students. Nor can the students see or hear you. But that doesn’t have to be……. You can communicate with online students both synchronously and asynchronously. Maybe you want to introduce yourself – think of using acrobat connect – you can record yourself giving information about who you are and what you hope to accomplish in the course. Then send the acrobat connect url to the students so they can see and hear you.
Click on https://connect.regis.edu/p91522760/ to hear Melanie Smith introduce herself to students in HCA 423 Legal Aspects of Health Care online class

Now you are a real person to them instead of a name in a syllabus. You can also use this technology to have a guest speaker record their presentation, to give feedback for assignments or to give feedback regarding threaded discussions.

If one of the assignments is to prepare a presentation on a topic, consider having the student join you in acrobat connect virtual office room and give the presentation. You can record the presentation and post acrobat connect url for other students to comment on and email questions.

If there is a group assignment, set aside time for the group to meet in the acrobat connect virtual office room for discussion, completion of a paper, a practice session and a place for the group give their presentation to you.

Advising students using acrobat connect virtual office room is also an option whether the student is online or ground based. The ability of either the faculty or the student to share the computer screen provides a way for faculty to show in real time what can be improved in a paper of to demonstrate how something is done. The camera provides the visual cues that both understand what is being discussed that is relied on in a face to face meeting. Students, who live longer distances from campus, appreciate not having to drive to campus to meet with the faculty.

Whether you are teaching online or in a classroom acrobat connect can be a helpful tool.

Helpful hint
If it is the first time a student will be required to use the virtual room for a class project or presentation, provide a 1:1 training session to make sure the student has gone through the diagnostics for their computer and has installed the software for their camera.

Other uses for Acrobat Connect
--Connect with colleagues –
--Schedule a meeting
--Present a seminar (webinar) see example https://connect.regis.edu/p51092591/
--Work on team projects

"Evidence at Your Fingertips" Presentation

This weekend I had the pleasure of giving a presentation on Web 2.0 solutions at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Manual Physical Therapists in Seattle. The presentation, Evidence at Your Fingertips: Elegant Solutions to Painful Process, was a big success and we got great feedback for participants. It is clear that clinicians are hungry for information on how to better access, organize, and implement information resources.

Use a Web 2.o tool called Slideshare.com I have uploaded the presentation below. Because the content is not really specific to physical therapists, the content from the presentation should be of interest to all individuals looking for examples of Web 2.0 solutions for busy people.

Tim Noteboom

Evidence at Your Fingertips: Elegance Solutions for Painful Processes

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

When a phone call won't do

How often have you ended a phone call with the statement, “I’ll email it to you” or “Email that to me please”? How inefficient, a communication promising or requesting another type of communication. The same holds true for email with an attachment. The attachment can go back and forth in game of electronic ping pong. If the objective is collaboration you need to use a tool that allows for real time collaboration.

In the last installment of this blog we looked at virtual meetings. This installment focuses on how Adobe Connect,sponsored by Regis University and freely available to faculty and staff, can be used for impromptu meetings and collaboration sessions with colleagues or students. Whether across campus or across oceans Adobe Connect provides Regis employees with the opportunity to meet in real time to solve problems more efficiently.

Within a meeting Adobe Connect users can simultaneously:

· Edit documents

· Mark up images, diagrams, and charts

· Exchange documents

· View the same website

· Share your desktop, an application, or a window

· Review student projects

Attendees can communicate via the telephone while viewing the content or, to save long distance charges, use free VOIP(Voice Over Internet Protocol) to discuss the issues and if desired can even use streaming video to see one another.

Using Connect isn’t complicated and assistance getting started is available from the CAT lab and RHCHP Distance Education. The only additional hardware you need for a meeting is a USB microphone and web cam. Learning Connect requires practice, but an experienced Connect user can get a meeting up and running in less than two minutes.

Obviously online meetings won’t replace the phone or email, but it will improve the efficiency of your collaborations and can help any budget strapped organization cut back on long distance charges.

This post was submitted by guest blogger, Doug.

Virtual Meetings: Is it a fad or is it your future?

Academic life is nothing if not meetings--"hallway" conversation with co-workers, committee meetings, one-on-one meeting with students, and even our core responsibility of teaching is a form of meeting. Not long ago our PT faculty read the book Death by Meeting, and since that time I have tried to be creative and more disciplined in how I think about meetings. I try to make each meeting I'm involved in to be as efficient & effective as possible.

This commitment has lead to the use of virtual meetings as a viable solution to improving meetings I have. Due to improvements in technology and other factors have made it easier than ever to incorporate virtual meetings (here is a primer on vitual meetings from the people at Educause.edu) into the meeting options. Here is just a short list of recent virtual meetings I have had:

• Conversation with work team on incorporating changes to our website (using Skype to connect 4 people not on campus).
  
• New student orientation and advising to 10+ students in an online program using Adobe Connect so that they could view a prepared Powerpoint presentation and then have a Q & A session between the whole group.
• Discuss upcoming teaching responsibility with two faculty living in New Zealand and Australia using Adobe Connect so that they could see my screen as I oriented them to course changes.
• Revise a research paper in real-time with co-authors, while simulataneously sharing resource files using Skype
  
• An impromtu Skype phone call, with webcams, with my 5th grader who wanted to show me an award from school.

Certainly, the good old telephone could have been used for these meetings (althought I would have hated to be the one to pay for that 40 min long distance call to New Zealand & Australia on a landline!), and that is still a great way to communicate. However, the ability to collaborate on documents or for a group to hear AND see the same content-rich information is exactly what is needed in some meetings in order to achieve the meeting goals.

Over the next few blog postings some of the faculty and staff in the RHCH will be sharing examples and how-to's for several virtual meeting and collabortion options, including educational and productivity uses for Skype, Adobe Connect, and others. In addition, the Education Technology Committee will host a virtual session using Adobe Connect to teach you how you could incoporate virtual meetings.

Please send me an email or use the comments to ask questions or suggest specific things you would like to see covered on this topic.

I look forward to "seeing" you in the virtual world.

Tim

I'm a Basic Computer User

I typically spend 4-9 hours per day, 6 days per week working/playing on a computer. It has also been 20 years since I bought my first computer. So why do I describe myself as a "basic" computer user?

Actually, I may be even lower than basic since I did not know some of the time-saving and very useful tricks recently described by New York Times Technology columnist David Pogue. For example, I always seem to have several windows and programs open on my computer screen at any one time and getting to the actual desktop screen can be frustratingly slow. Instead of closing or minimizing these open windows, I should have just hit the Windows key and “D” simultaneously in Windows, or press F11 on Macs (on recent Mac laptops, Command+F3; Command is the key with the cloverleaf logo). I'm sure others will find similar time and/or frustration saving tips on the site. In fact, when you go to the linked site and scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page you will see that over 1,000 readers have added comments to his posting with many offering their own favorite tricks.

I don't expect NEARLY that many comments to this blog, but if you do want to share a "basic" computing tip or trick please do so.

Tim

How to: adding an RSS feed to Netvibes

Hopefully, you have tried using one of the RSS aggregators highlighted in the previous blog. If you still need some help on actually accomplishing this task, I have recorded a 5-min video on how to do this. Perhaps after watching this you will be motivated to give it a try. If you do, please post a comment stating your success or failure. I will be demonstrating how to do this tomorrow prior to and just after Faculty Forum, so please stop by if you prefer your demonstrations live.

[Note: the screen capture software I used for this demonstration was JingProject, which is a free download from TechSmith Comany, makers of SnagIT and Camtasia softwares. When I downloaded JingProject to try it out, I also signed up for a free ScreenCast account which allows me to immediately upload the video and generate a URL that I can, and did, share with others. More on these technologies in upcoming blogs postings.]

Tim

Where do you want to go today?

Do you remember that tag line in a series of Microsoft commercials a few years ago? I thought it captured the excitement of the growing internet where one could visit websites from around the world. This exploration seemed to fit my appreciation of adventure travel--always something new to explore.

Perhaps it is because I am older or have less time now, but I am more inclined now to have the world come to me, rather than me go explore the world. That is were RSS feeds (fun 3-min video explaining an RSS feeds) have a role. One of the biggest benefits of Web 2.0 features is that you can have more of the world come to you, and it is fairly easy to set up. All you need are some interesting sites that you want to get information from, and access to one of the many free RSS readers, such as MyYahoo, iGoogle, NewsGator, or Netvibes (they are kind of like sports teams-there are a lot of them and everyone has their favorite!).

I happen to use Netvibes and here is a page you can view from it. You will see that I have multiple headings or tabs to organize the feeds that are on that page. Once I find a feed that may be worth my time I add the feed and then leave it to the the site to keep "feeding" me new information. If I find that the feed is not quite what I expect, I delete it and find something more valuable.

In the 18 months that I have been using Netvibes, I find myself spending much less time exploring the web, and when it do it is specifically because the feed summary interesting enough for me to follow the link to learn more.

So that is a quick introduction to RSS feeds, and how "pushed" information can help you informed, but without having to travel through too many websites to get what you want.

Happy exploring!

Tim

Welcome to the blog!

Hello, and welcome to the first posting in this blog dedicated to highlighting, sharing and discussing issues related to educational technology, specifically to those affecting health care educators and learners in the university setting. This blog was developed as a better way for faculty and others to better integrate technology into educational settings in both ground-based and online courses.

This blog is the responsibility of the Educational Technology Committee in the Rueckert Hartman College of Health Professions, which is part of Regis University in Denver. The College contains schools of nursing, physical therapy and pharmacology, along with departments of health services administration and ethics. Therefore, even though the discussion on this blog should be applicable to a wide variety of teachers and learners, individuals within these disciplines will be the primary target audience.

Although there are several reasons for starting this blog, the primary factors are a growing interest in faculty and students to optimize the use of technology in the learning environment. Certainly, the explosion of Web 2.0 resources make this optimization possible, but it also presents its own challenges with increased options and the potential for learning curves for faculty and students. Another factor is the grow in the College means that it is increasingly difficulty for faculty to share best practices with others who may be interested in similar implementation.

Although the focus and implementation of this blog may change over time, here are is what readers of the blog an expect. New blog postings will be made approximately 1-2 times per week. Although I will take the responsibility for generating most of the initial postings, a number of faculty who have successfully implemented learning resources into ground and online environments will be sharing their insights on the blog. Finally, to make this blog an effective resource there needs to be dialog with the larger community of users. Therefore, it is hoped that many of you will find it helpful to join the discussion by posting replies to original postings, suggesting topics to be discussed on the blog and even becoming a contributing member.

So let's get started. Remember, like any blog you can subscribe to it so that it either arrives in your email box automatically or you can subscribe using one of several aggregators. More on that in the next blog.

Tim Noteboom,
Chair, RHCHP Educational Technology Committee