Obtain tips on how to be more effective with your online presence. Interact with a panel of experienced instructors from various universities and hear about their perspectives on how to develop teaching presence and elicit a feeling of connectedness online. Help learners feel like you’re omni-present even when you’re not.
Online instruction has advantages as well as disadvantages for faculty. Online instructors have flexibility in their schedule, a diverse population across the globe and often, the academic freedom to design the curriculum. According to the community of inquiry (CoI) the effectiveness of the educational experience in an online class includes engagement with goals and directions, interaction with content and collaboration between participants online (Garrison, Anderson and Archer, 2000). Jones (2011) describes the roles of the online instructor as a designer of the learning experience, facilitator of the course in addition to content expert. Creating and maintaining the effective educational experience can be intimidating for all levels of instructors. Instructors often find themselves bound by time and duty, feeling less than adequate when trying to maintain effectiveness in their online classes and a balance the time spent on the course.
The focus of this presentation, involves developing a successful classroom environment to encourage student interaction and academic success. We are four online instructors from diverse universities and will demonstrate strategies on how to create an effective environment without working 24 hours a day. Strategies include techniques for creating clear instructions, increasing collaboration through discussions and personalizing feedback. Various tools will be presented such as universal apps used to assist in effective instruction and create a connectedness in the online environment. We will demonstrate how to alter your on-grounds persona to best connect with online students. You will leave this demonstration with a range of tools and strategies that increase your online presence thus increasing the effectiveness of your online engagement and student success.