Further to my thoughts about the importance of teacher presence, I have been looking through the literature, and of course one of my favourites and most useful ones: Garrison & Anderson’s E-Learning in the 21st Century. What struck me in their framework of a community of inquiry was what they said about teacher presence (2003, p. 29)
The third mutually reinforcing element in a community of inquiry is teacher presence. [...] While there must be full and open participation, for a purposeful educational experience there is an inherent need for an architect and facilitator to design, direct, and inform the transaction.
For me, the most important point here is the design of any online learning environment in the broadest sense (activities, collaborative tasks, materials, assessment, etc) but as Garrison & Anderson further explain “teaching presence is defined as ‘the design, facilitation and direction of cognitive and social processes for the purpose of realising personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile learning outcomes’ (Anderson et al, 2001).”
The challenges are manifold, not only that which is for me most important, because it is the base of it all and the first step, the design, which leads the learner through the experience in a meaningful and encouraging way, but the design then has to support and enable the teaching/teacher presence to function as a balancer and motivator who facilitates the learning experience. This is no mean task, and in fact I dare say more challenging than presence in a F2F environment.
How to achieve this balance? How to encourage learners and their community without being overpowering and leading any discussions and experiences? A fine balancing act indeed.
The skills of summarising and encouraging further thought are designed to help with the above, but this is time and resource intensive. Thus there is another balance: that of teacher presence and engagement through summarising and encouraging deeper thought and giving feedback where appropriate – and that of the simple base line of it all: resources. Resources are finite, and we must strike a balance between what is necessary, what is ideal, and what is realistic.
Garrison, D.R. and Anderson, T. (2003) E-Learning in the 21st Century: a framework for research and practice, London: Routledge.
