Cognitive presence refers to the assurance that critical thinking skills develop and grow. Social presence refers to the assurance of students feeling safe and secure as they engage in a collaborative context, as well as presenting themselves as live human beings. Cognitive and social presences are required to be able to agree/disagree on viewpoints, share opinions and experiences, and to accept help from teachers and peers.
The teacher presence depends upon many factors in order to be successful. First of all, teachers design and organize the content to be taught, implement the activities, and set the climate for the online learning experience. They do this while staying current with assignments, activities and discussion formats as information changes around us and on the internet (including student works). As students progress with their studies, teachers are able to let the students take control of their learning, "however, the need to stimulate, guide and support learning remains." (p.346) Teachers must still maintain a cognitive presence so students continue to be provided with encouragement and motivation.
"There are two competing models of online learning," community of learning and independent study, "each of which has strong adherents and a growing body of research and theoretical rationales for its effective application." (p.348) The community of learning model is the type this class, EDFI575, is using where we may or may not be online at the same time and our structure and lessons come from the school's mainframe classroom. Difficulty transpires when students are required to be online at the same time, but they may be in different time zones. This happens with my brother-in-law in his line of work where a meeting may be happening somewhere in the China, but he lives in France and must work out time differences. The other model of online learning is independent study which allows students to be flexible, but challenges the teachers to maintain the balance among cognitive, social and the teaching presences.
"Effective teaching presence demands explicit and detailed discussion of the criteria by which student learning will be assessed." (p. 351) The timing of feedback plays an important role in "providing motivation, shaping behaviour, and developing mental constructs." (p.352) Students expect instant feedback, but just because the class is online does not mean there will be instant feedback from teachers. Just as in real life, teachers have a life offline and out of the classroom.
Grading is another issue that teachers face. Is quantity more important, less important, or equally important than quality? "Student assessment of any kind requires that the teacher be explicit, fair, consistent,and as objective as possible." (p.353) Even though a teacher may present a rubrics for students to follow, it is also nice to have more personal feedback.
Finally there are certain qualities that make online teachers excellent. First of all, excellent online teachers are those who really like to deal with learners and are enthusiastic and energetic about the content they are teaching. They also have plenty of activities to support effective learning. Excellent online teachers also have to "have sufficient technical skill to navigate and contribute effectively within the online learning context, have access to necessary hardware, and have sufficient internet efficacy." (p.360) Excellent teachers are innovative and show patience and perseverance in an unknown online road ahead.
MY THOUGHTS
The first class I took online was in 2000 (at the University of Findlay) when the idea was new and there were many kinks to work out. The class required students to be online at the same time in the same chat room for a certain amount of time. (I cannot remember if it was one or two hours.) Students were to have read a certain assignment ahead of time and be ready to comment. The articles were interesting, but there were problems with the class that did not allow the students to present our thoughts and questions. The two main problems were that there were too many conversations going on at once that it was difficult to keep up with any of them. The biggest problem was that the server would get jammed and either the class would try to enter another chat room or the professor (after trying for awhile to fix the situation) would cancel class.
Fortunately sixteen years later the system has gotten much better. This class, EDFI575, allows students to interact with classmates without having technical difficulties. Blogs in this class have helped in the fact that I am able to write about what I learned from particular articles, ask questions, and share my own thoughts, as well as read what others have to say. The benefit of the blog is that if I have a question or thought for someone (or vice versa) after reading my blog, s/he can reply to it at anytime and I can respond to that at any time. We do not have to worry about an overloaded server.
Spelling and grammar provokes a dilemma with teachers. The question arises for the teacher if one should mark off spelling and grammar errors whether it is in the chat room or in a blog. I can guess that since chat rooms are spontaneous, teachers may be more lenient; however, blogs allow students time to write, so it is more likely that teachers will be less tolerant when it comes to spelling and grammar problems. Spelling correctly and being grammatically correct are important qualities in the real world and it makes you appear more confident and professional.
The idea of grading is being debated in the online learning arena. Is quantity more, less or of equal importance to quality when it comes to assessing posts in a chat room and replies to blogs? In my opinion quality is more important. There is a saying, less is more, which tells me that a person can get his/her point across with few words and means just as much, if not more, than a wordy person.
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