- How has your view of the effective practice changed now that you have read more about teaching presence?
I can see that the design and organization can really make a difference when it comes to teaching presence. There can be a disconnect if the person designing the course is not the same person who is facilitating it. Ideas that seem good on paper (or that worked in a f2f course) sometimes do not translate well to online instruction. It is important for anyone facilitating to have the ability to make changes ‘on the fly’ to design where necessary.
- In what ways did the effective practice that you identified show the characteristics of teaching presence?
The effective practice that I identified is absolutely facilitating discourse. My prof asking me questions to come to a conclusion on my own was to stimulate individual learning (Anderson et al., 2001). This prof was also very present in our forums, adding comments to move discussion along.
- How could the idea of teaching presence have made the experience even more effective than it was?
I am not sure there is anything that could have made the experience more effective. Not just for my conversations about my paper, but in general. I have no idea if my prof designed the course, but it was well designed; the assessments were very much aligned with the content and the objectives. As mentioned, each of the other elements of teaching presence were demonstrated by the prof.
Reference
Anderson, Rourke, Garrison, & Archer (2001). Assessing teaching presence in a computer conferencing context. Journal of the Asynchronous Learning Network 5: 1-17.