Applying Online Instructor Presence Amidst Changing Times

Introduction

Online learning has struggled to support retention and student success since its inception (Allen & Seaman, 2015; Hamann et al., 2020; Jaggars, 2012; Xu & Jaggars, 2014). Engaging students in an online modality can be challenging even for seasoned instructors. Diverse students with a multitude of needs increase the necessity for proactive engagement by instructors to maintain successful outcomes. Identifying sustainable strategies to apply in the online context is essential to improvement (in both K-12 and higher education) and to provide the quality of educational experience more pursuant to traditional institutional outcomes. And although research on applying Instructor Presence (IP), based on the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model, has had promising results, the initial model was developed over two decades ago (Garrison et al., 1999). This means that how these crucial areas (teaching, social and cognitive presence) can be applied, should be evaluated and updated, based on increasingly more technological sophistication.

It is with this knowledge that our team of fulltime instructors strategized and developed an IP training series as an intervention to improve retention and success rates. The series purposefully included up-to-date application examples to more effectively equip instructors, as well as self-assessment activities, with the goal of improving outcomes in their classrooms. Once the instructors were IP trained, our analysis focused on the effects to drop rates, success rates, and satisfaction to determine if the IP strategies successfully resulted in an immediate improvement. To our knowledge, this training series was the first of its kind, explicitly demonstrating immediate-based strategies that instructors could apply to their classrooms, resulting also in a certification program disseminated to the entire institution, and, as a response to the pandemic-associated educational crisis, to the global educational community though social-networking communications.

Specific to this chapter, strategies included in the training series will be highlighted to support the readers who may be part of the global educational community who have been forced to move their courses online, as the current state of social distancing and heightened feelings of insecurity have mandated (Hodges et al., 2020). For these educators, the transition from traditional to online educational settings has created barriers that must be addressed with timely development and support. In addition, the long-term challenges encountered by experienced online institutions are similar to those being faced by educators and learners (both K-12 and in higher education) who have been forced to learn online due to the pandemic: perceptions of increased instructor workloads, feelings of isolation, anxiety due to lack of resources (Angdhiri, 2020), lowering math achievement (Kuhfeld et al., 2020), disadvantages of online learning associated with low-income students (García & Weiss, 2020), increased dropout risks (De La Rosa, 2020), and feelings of unpreparedness for learning online, reducing likelihood of success (Zhao, 2020). It has been suggested that “[at] least 24 million children are projected to drop out of school due to Covid-19” (Feuer, 2020, para 1). This situation incites online professionals to support their traditional counterparts by sharing research and best practices to overcome these challenges (Bond et al., 2018; Sandkuhl & Lehmann, 2017), especially as the long-term consequences of moving traditional learning to online are still unknown (Kuhfeld et al., 2020). Also, support for those moving online is limited, offering an opportunity for seasoned online educators to play a pivotal role in helping to support the challenges faced by these instructors and institutions (Bond et al., 2018; Sandkuhl & Lehmann, 2017).

It is with this mindset that we share our action research findings and highlight some of the immediately applicable strategies that were included in the research protocol that can support seasoned online instructors as well as those new to online learning. Our suggested research-based strategies included in this chapter, although associated with a university level learning environment, are universally applicable and can be integrated into the K-12 environment. Suggestions for applying the variables, based on age, development, and culture, are included.