Creating Teaching Presence

Asynchronous teaching represents a collection of approaches and planning to ensure students feel connected and engaged. And, while students may not be accessing the learning materials, activities, or assessments at the same time, carefully designed asynchronous learning opportunities can address every aspect of the Community of Inquiry framework to promote social, cognitive, and teaching presence.

Understanding how to leverage important components in an online learning environment such as announcements, assignments, and assessments can help instructors create an engaging, intentional online learning experience. Learning to use these components helps instructors remain present in the learning environment, even if students are accessing the information at different times. On the following pages of the Commentary, you will learn about both the practical issues and the pedagogical strategies of leveraging the key features of an online course to help create teaching presence.

Use Course Announcements to Improve Instructor Presence 

Course announcements serve as a news feed that you can use to share information, guide students, or provide important updates. Announcements form an essential first point of contact, a touchstone for students every time they log into the classroom. Having a robust slate of announcements in your course is one way to enhance teaching presence in the course, which leads to heightened student engagement and builds rapport as well.

As you integrate course announcements, keep the purpose of the announcement in mind. Here are some common approaches to announcements:

• Weekly Course Announcement. Provide an overview of the week ahead. Include key due dates, assignment information, and resources. Try using a consistent format each week to help with clarity. Also think about how this announcement can "trigger a sense puzzlement" about the upcoming week, one of the ways you can promote cognitive presence in the course. 
• Weekly Wrap-Up Announcement. Add a summary announcement to close the loop on main themes, discussion ideas, and any recommendations to enrich or expand their learning from the week on their own. These announcements can be a great way to create connectivity from one week to the next as you scaffold student learning. It can also be a way to promote motivation, by enhancing meaning and engendering competence.
• Ad-Hoc Announcements. Did a current event happen that ties into course content? Is there a resource or a "tips and tricks" announcement that might assist students? Use intermittent ad-hoc announcements within a module or week to demonstrate presence and support student learning in a need-it-now fashion.

Think of a number of announcements you plan to post during each week and stick with that throughout the course so students can start to expect the cadence you've established. In addition, consider using enriched media as a way to engage students more dynamically, and try to integrate a variety of media options, like hyperlinks, source existing audio/video clips, or create your own (using tools like Panopto or Video Note).

If you have crafted a particularly great announcement for one course then, by all means, use it again in a future term! You can create a document into which you keep a repository of well-crafted announcements, which you can then re-use and modify based on the course, the term, and/or your students' needs.

Creating and Curating Content

Online courses require different means of content delivery from face-to-face courses. We must think differently about content online than simply taking what we use in a face-to-face course and putting in a digital format.

In making your initial choices about content, consider the following questions:

• What content must be included, and what can be left out?
• What is the best way to sequence and organize the content?
• What are the best media to present the content?

Curating Content

Most instructors curate content from a variety of credible online resources. Open Education Resources (OER) is one option to add to your course content. OER refers to resources and material that either have been released under an intellectual property license that permits a specific level of re-use or are available in the public domain. It can refer to many different types of resources.

One benefit to using OER is that it can be helpful if your subject matter is rapidly changing. In addition, using OER can provide greater access to students and decrease costs.

There are many elements you will want to take into consideration when choosing OER. The NLU Library can help you identify sources for OER, and help you ensure the resources are in a format that is accessible for all students, and help you determine any copyright restrictions to using the resources in an online course. 

Just spending 15 minutes searching on the Internet can lead you to find several other resources that can help your students acquire knowledge and skills included in your learning objectives. It can sometimes be overwhelming with just how much is available on the Internet. However, we want to be sure that other online resources, such as websites, graphics, videos, and other media are accessible, credible, sustainable, and legal to use in our courses. In general, you should use

• Professional over personal or commercial websites (and blogs), unless you can verify the credibility of the author.
• Articles (as  PDF files) that were created with accessibility in mind (and not just scanned and saved as a PDF file).
• Streaming videos (e.g., YouTube) that you know were uploaded without violating copyright guidelines.

The NLU Library has access to many academic databases and video streaming services. They can help you find resources appropriate for your subject matter, as well as help you correctly insert a permalink to the resource in your course.

Creating Content Using Audio and Video

Using video can be a powerful way to integrate content into your online course, whether it is video you create or video that exists via a streaming service. Video, along with graphics and audio, supports a multi-modality approach that is important in Universal Design for Learning (UDL) by offering multiple means of representation.

In addition to using video to supplement your announcements, you can record audio and video to

• Summarize perspectives shared in a weekly discussion.
• Tell a personal story that involves a concept in the course.
• Demonstrate a process.
• Generate interest and excitement about a new module.

Recording Audio and Video

1. Panopto. Panopto provides lecture recording, screencasting, video streaming, and video content management tools. Since Panopto is integrated into D2L, you can easily share your videos in your course. 
2. Video Note. Video Note enables you to easily create video recordings from a webcam and insert them into your course, using the "Insert Stuff" button wherever you see the text editor in D2L. 
3. Loom. Loom is a video recording tool that helps you get your message across through instantly shareable videos (and screencasts). You can then copy and paste the video link anywhere in your course.
4. PowToon. PowToon is web-based animation software that allows you to quickly and easily create animated presentations. (There are many of these tools available, each with different functions available for free to educators.)

Creating Graphics for Instruction

You can also create graphics that help communicates abstract concepts. When used appropriately, graphics can be a powerful tool in your online course. In addition to providing aesthetic appeal, graphics provide a visual component to your instructional materials that can complement or even enhance your written text. A few common examples of graphics are icons, illustrations, photographs, graphs, diagrams, maps, art, and animations.

You might consider creating graphics to

1. Show relationships more easily than describing the relationships in text only. Think of illustrations and diagrams that provide a realistic outline to accompany the text.
2. Depict the flow or sequence of a difficult topic. Possible organizational graphics include drawings, maps, flowcharts, or animations.
3. Display trends and other relations between different variables. Examples include bar graphs, pie charts, histograms, and scatter plots.

Here are some ways to easily create graphics and use in your course:

1. Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint. We typically think of these tools for creating multimedia slide presentations, but you can also create different types of graphics on a slide using the drawing tools, then save the slide as an image.
2. Google Drawings. Google Drawings is a very versatile tool that allows you to make all sorts of graphic designs and publications that can be inserted into other Google tools of exported as an image file. 
3. Canva. Canva is a simple to use graphic design tool that allows you to make images and designs for the web or for print. The free version includes several templates and stock photos and graphics.
4. Piktochart. Piktochart allows you to easily create reports, presentations, infographics, social media graphics, and prints. 

Using Assessments to Inform Instruction

Assessment in general is critical as you gauge your students’ understanding, make adjustments to your teaching, differentiate learning for students, and add supplemental resources.

Common examples of assessments in an asynchronous learning environment include a discussion forum (see Module 5), an assignment, a quiz or test, or other type of artifact that is designed to assess achievement of the learning objectives for the week or module.

As you consider your assessment strategy, be sure it consists of both formative and summative assessments. This will ensure that you can address gaps along the way and have end-of-course assessment data that aligns to your course objectives.

• Formative assessment. Using Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) is one important way to gather ongoing evidence of student learning. They can be a quick way to gauge student learning during a course. In the online course, that might be accomplished with using a tool like Padlet or Flipgrid where students share their "muddiest point" or personal reflection. The use of technology tools does not take too much time to plan or implement, but the information gained is very valuable and can positively affect the teaching-learning process in your online course.
• Summative assessment. Using quizzes, tests, papers, and projects can all be forms of summative assessment. Be sure your assessments align to the module learning objectives.

In addition to discussions, which were examined in detail in Engaging Asynchronous Discussions, you can use any of the tools in D2L to support formative and summative assessment efforts (see D2L Assessments tab).

D2L Assessments

Assignments

The assignment submission folder is where students submit assignments asynchronously to their instructor.

You can view students’ submissions, provide feedback overall or directly on the submission with annotations, and return submissions with grades and feedback to students.

When appropriate, consider incorporating a mix of assignment types. If you are using pre-existing assignments, consider how you can honor the students’ voices, different backgrounds, and contexts to add depth and richness to assignments using culturally-responsive approaches. Consider a varied approach of assignment types to address the needs of diverse learners, while allowing for multiple means of representation. For example, instead of exclusively relying on written papers for assignments, can students record a narrated slideshow, a video, a podcast, or infographic that would also demonstrate their mastery? In addition, go back to your learning objectives and determine what you are asking students to do in their assignment and how that aligns with the course content and objectives.

Recommendations for using the assignment tool:

1. Explain the purpose for the assignment. Recall that a major motivator for learning is helping students see meaning in their work.
2. Provide clear directions on how students are to complete the assignment. Point out resources they should use.
3. Explain how their work will be assessed, and how this will influence their final grade in the course.
4. Consider how and when students will be able to apply feedback they receive on the assignment. Will they have a chance to resubmit? Can they use this feedback when completing future assignments?

Note: Students are often motivated through challenge that offers the possibility of more refined thinking, new knowledge, deeper understanding, or better performance and skills.

Quizzes

The tool in D2L is called "Quizzes", but this tool can be used for a quiz (typically covering a smaller amount of content with a fewer number of questions, and having a smaller, if any, impact on the final course grade) or a test or exam (covering larger amounts of content, oftentimes including many more questions, and having a more significant impact on the final course grade).

Quizzes can help you, as the instructor, identify when students may need some re-teaching or remediation in certain content areas, and they can help students gauge their understanding and progress with achieving the learning objectives. 

Quizzes with objective questions (e.g., true/false, matching, multiple choice) can be auto-scored, and you can control what students see when they submit (e.g., just the score, the score with their responses, with or without the correct answers).

Recommendations for using the quiz tool:

Providing Effective Feedback

Providing prompt, specific feedback is important in all learning environments, but it's particularly important in asynchronous modalities. Students do not have the benefit of seeing their instructor in-person, so there tends to be more angst related to grades and their progress.

Providing substantive and timely feedback helps to put you on a path of integrating the 10 Principles of Online Teaching at NLU, in particular, returning grades and feedback for assignments within 7 days and communicating high expectations (Principles #4 and 5).

Students need to receive prompt feedback so that it can be incorporated into their work for the next assignment or module. Providing them feedback on the fact that they did not complete the weekly assignment to your expectations three weeks after they initially submitted it means that they have completed three more weeks of inferior work, without the benefit of your feedback from the first submission.

More importantly, be mindful of the tenets of Growth Mindset and student efficacy theory by following a pattern such as

• Address the student by name in the feedback area.
• Reinforce what the student did well, as it relates to the learning objectives.
• Provide actionable and clear areas of improvement, with compassion, again, aligned to the learning objectives.

For students who veered off-track, append your feedback with an offer to discuss it further. You can also supplement any text-based feedback (in a discussion or assignment) with audio or video (e.g., using Panopto or Video Note via the "Insert Stuff" button on the toolbar).

Tutorial for Providing Feedback in D2L

This video on the D2L Bright space YouTube channel offers step-by-step on how to view, grade, and provide feedback on assignments. 

Substantive Assignment Feedback

Here is an example of substantive feedback on an assignment in which the learning objectives included supporting a point of view with evidence and organizing ideas in a logical sequence:

"Kam, great work overall on this assignment. I liked how you were able to defend your position using information from the textbook with proper citations and references.

Two things that would have strengthened this submission would be to include the two other information sources that were asked of you in the assignment directions (two additional scholarly references), and to more thoroughly proofread your paper prior to submission.

The benefit of seeking out additional resources is that you consider other points' of view, which may help you identify potential biases and question the interests served by adopting a particular point of view.

You can also use our Writing Center (link in the Getting Help module) to get a professional review of your paper prior to submitting it, you just need to give them 3 days for a turnaround.

This may not be the grade you were hoping for, and I know you can do this! Let me know if you want to talk about this more before you start next week’s assignment."

-- Professor B