Group items tagged

Social presence is the perceived presence of others in mediated communication (Rourke, Garrison, & Archer, 1999), which Garrison et al. (2000) contend supports both cognitive and teaching presence through its ability to instigate, to sustain, and to support interaction. It had its genesis in the work of John Dewey and is consistent with all theoretical approaches to learning in higher education.

Teaching presence is defined as “the design, facilitation and direction of cognitive and social processes for the purpose of realizing [students’] personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile outcomes” (Anderson et al., 2001, p.5). Vygotsky’s (1978) scaffolding analogies illustrate an assistive role for teachers in providing instructional support to students from their position of greater content knowledge. Although many authors recommend a “guide on the side” approach to moderating student discussions, a key feature of this social cognition model is the adult, the expert, or the more skilled peer who scaffolds a novice’s learning

Shea, Pickett, & Pelz , 2004

Each category of a tutor’s presence is vital to learning and to the establishment of the learning community; tutors' behavior must be such that they are seen to be “posting regularly, responding in a timely manner and modeling good online communication and interaction” (Palloff & Pratt, 2003, p.118). Without an instructor’s explicit guidance and “teaching presence,” students were found to engage primarily in “serial monologues” (Pawan et al., 2003). Baker (2004) discovered that “instructor immediacy, i.e., teaching presence (Rourke et al., 1999), was a more reliable predictor of effective cognitive learning than whether students felt close to each other. Studies have demonstrated that instructor participation in threaded discussion is critical to the development of social presence (Shea, Li, Swan, & Pickett, 2005; Swan & Shih, 2005) and sometimes not fully appreciated by online faculty (Liu, Bonk, Magjuka, Lee, & Su, 2005). Shea, Li, and Pickett (2006) proposed that teaching presence – viewed as the core role of the online instructor – is a promising mechanism for developing learning community in online environments.

students ranked instructor modeling as the most important element in building online community, while instructors ranked it fourth.

Shea (2006), who completed an extensive study of teaching presence and online learning, concluded that two categories (“design” and “directed facilitation”) sufficed to define the construct.

Kalman, Ravid, Raban, and Rafaeli (2006) argued that interactivity is an essential characteristic of effective online communication and plays an important role in keeping message threads and their authors together. Interactive communication (online as well as in traditional settings) is engaging, and loss of interactivity results in a breakdown of the communicative process.

Research indicates the existence of a relationship between learners’ perceptions of social presence and their motivation for participation in online discussions (Weaver & Albion, 2005).

Northrup (2002) found that online learners felt it was important for instructors to promote collaboration and conversation. When interactive activities are carefully planned, they lead not only to greater learning but also to enhanced motivation (Berge 1999; Northrup, 2002).

Researchers have suggested that timing of messages can serve as a proxy for a sense of social presence (Blanchard, 2004), as an indication of attentiveness (Walther & Bunz, 2005) or respect (Bargh & McKenna, 2004), and as a clue to the sociability of a community (Maloney-Krichmar & Preece, 2005). As such, the frequency of messages may serve as a signal for how engaged participants are with the community.

Eom found that the most significant factors for increasing student satisfaction with online classes are paying attention to students and responding to their concerns.

The highly esteemed instructor was especially active from semester midpoint to semester end; she more than doubled her active participation in both teaching presence (especially discourse and instruction) and social presence (all three categories).

the lack of specific, progressively structured inquiry tasks and/or the lack of facilitation skills (teaching presence/facilitating discourse) may have contributed to the relatively limited occurrences of cognitive presence.

something else accounted for the extreme satisfaction and dissatisfaction experienced by students in the two forums. The something else may be the two exceptional events that occurred during the third month: The instructor held in low esteem became nearly dysfunctional, while the highly esteemed instructor exhibited very high teacher presence and social presence (see Table 3 and 4).

Shea, Pickett, and Pelt (2003) found that students’ perceived teacher presence also correlates with perceived learning as well as with students’ satisfaction with the forum. This correlation points to the tentative conclusion that teaching presence affords learning by setting a convenient climate.

we suggest that students’ perceived learning in course forums has a significant impact on their participation

the table is suggestive of the eventual possibility of having an “objective” tool for evaluating the quality of a given forum.

(Anderson et al., 2001).

Teaching effectiveness may be defined as how an instructor can best direct, facilitate, and support students toward certain academic ends, such as achievement and satisfaction. Teaching effectiveness has been investigated extensively in traditional classrooms for more than seven decades (for a meta-analysis of empirical studies from 1995-2004, see Seidel & Shavelson, 2007). Over the past five years, research has become directed toward teaching effectiveness in online or virtual classes. As a preface to our study, we discuss findings and conclusions concerning teaching effectiveness in traditional classrooms.

Journal Help ISSN: 1492-3831 Journal Content Search All Authors Title Abstract Index terms Full Text Browse By Issue By Author By Title User Username Password Remember me Article Tools Abstract Print this article Indexing metadata How to cite item Review policy Email this article (Login required) Email the author (Login required) Post a Comment (Login required) Font Size Make font size smaller Make font size default Make font size larger SUBSCRIBE TO MAILING LIST 5,591  subscribers Select Language​▼ function googleTranslateElementInit() { new google.translate.TranslateElement({ pageLanguage: 'en', autoDisplay: false, layout: google.translate.TranslateElement.InlineLayout.SIMPLE }, 'google_translate_element'); } Home About Register Archives Announcements Resources Submissions http://www.irrodl.org/

One of the most widely cited sources for teacher effectiveness in traditional classrooms is Chickering and Gamson (1987), who suggested seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education.

encourages student-faculty contact, encourages cooperation among students, encourages active learning, gives prompt feedback, emphasizes time on task, communicates high expectations, respects diverse talents and ways of learning.

I believe my list of assumptions can get very long, knowing how unpredictable this age group can be.  Now that I am not assuming anything, I can move on to the next step at planning this awesome astronomy course.

Summary and Conclusions This study reports three principle findings.  First, from a survey of student opinion it is reported that 59% believe that the frequency of cheating is the same in both the online and the f2f instructional format. The proportion is significantly greater than 50% at the .05 level. It is also reported that the responses to the question of cheating and instructional format are significantly different depending on whether the student came from an online class or a f2f class, but only at a p-value of .1060.  Recalling the literature review in Table 1, which reported mixed findings by previous empirical studies, an interesting implication for future research is whether student experience with each instructional format influences student perceptions of differences in the frequency of cheating. Second, on proctoring and the frequency of cheating on essay exams and multiple choice exams, it is reported that roughly half of the respondents perceive unproctored assessments as having greater cheating risk than the same assessment in a proctored format, and half think they have equal cheating risk. These findings are consistent with the conventional perception that in a side by side comparison of two courses with comparable content and predominately multiple choice exam assessments, the course with unproctored exams is viewed as having greater cheating risk. Third, in our analysis of assessment design in 20 online courses it is reported that 70% base roughly half the course grade on unproctored multiple choice exams.     These findings imply that online courses, which have unproctored multiple choice exams, can reduce perceived cheating risk by proctoring some of their multiple choice exams without significantly altering the original mix of assessment types. Gresham’s Law suggests that online courses debased by assessment designs with high cheating risk will displace courses with relatively lower cheating risk. Institutions of higher education tone deaf to the issue of proctoring online multiple choice assessments may understandably find other institutions reluctant to accept these courses for transfer credit.  The benefit of proctoring is not without cost.  A proctored exam limits the spatial and the asynchronous dimensions of online instruction, which may have been the core reason the student enrolled in the online. These costs can be mitigated to some extent by early announcement of the time and date of the exam, by allowing for some flexibility of time of exam, and by permitting use of alternate certified proctoring centers. The costs to individual instructors are formidable but there are potentially significant economies of scale to be realized by integration of online courses with an existing system that administers proctoring of exams for f2f classes.  Proctoring of some multiple choice exam assessments will reduce cheating risk. The elephant in the room, however, is the cheating risk on non-exam unproctored assessments (for example term papers, essays, discussion, and group projects). These are widely used in f2f instruction and, as online instruction evolves, will likely become equally widely used in online courses. These assessments are valuable because they encourage learning by student-to-student and student-to-faculty interactions, and because they measure Bloom’s higher levels of learning. These assessments have higher cheating risk than proctored multiple choice exams. These assessments, more so than multiple choice exams, challenge the ability of faculty and administration to inspire students to behave ethically and to refrain from academic misconduct.

one of the foundational concepts in social media has become that you cannot completely control your message through social media but rather you can simply begin to participate in the "conversation" expecting that you can achieve a significant influence in that conversation.[7]

Several colleges have even introduced classes on best social media practices, preparing students for potential careers as digital strategists.[

Out of this anarchy, it suddenly became clear that what was governing the infinite monkeys now inputting away on the Internet was the law of digital Darwinism, the survival of the loudest and most opinionated. Under these rules, the only way to intellectually prevail is by infinite filibustering."[34]

social media in the form of public diplomacy creates a patina of inclusiveness that covers traditional economic interests that are structured to ensure that wealth is pumped up to the top of the economic pyramid, perpetuating the digital divide and post Marxian class conflict.

He also speculates on the emergence of "anti-social media" used as "instruments of pure control".[36]

Social networking now accounts for 22% of all time spent online in the US.[15] A total of 234 million people age 13 and older in the U.S. used mobile devices in December 2009.[16] Twitter processed more than one billion tweets in December 2009 and averages almost 40 million tweets per day.[16] Over 25% of U.S. internet page views occurred at one of the top social networking sites in December 2009, up from 13.8% a year before.[16] Australia has some of the highest social media usage in the world. In usage of Facebook, Australia ranks highest, with over 9 million users spending almost 9 hours per month on the site.[17][18] The number of social media users age 65 and older grew 100 percent throughout 2010, so that one in four people in that age group are now part of a social networking site.[19] As of June 2011[update] Facebook has 750 Million users.[20] Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.[21] Social Media has overtaken pornography as the No. 1 activity on the web.[21] iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months, and Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months.[21] If Facebook were a country it would be the world's 3rd largest in terms of population, that's above the US. U.S. Department of Education study revealed that online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction.[21] YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world.[21] In four minutes and 26 seconds 100+ hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube.[21] 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media.[21] 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum.[21]