Some great ideas have already been suggested for Trinh. She is obviously a devoted teacher but the popularity of this course is now becoming a burden. If there are no resources to split the course in two, and hire another instructor, perhaps her university does offer the services of an instructional designer. Clearly the way the course is organized no longer works for her. In addition, if she doesn’t get help soon, she will burn out, because this course only counts as half of her annual working load. Perhaps with design help she could reduce her workload and/or argue that her instructional hours warrant reclassification.
If we are using the framework of Garrison, Anderson and Archer (1999), then it could be said that Trinh has put too much emphasis on the ‘Direct Instruction’ category of Teaching Presence (p. 191). Live guest lectures are wonderful, but if she recorded some of these, then time would be freed up both for her students and herself. Answering students’ questions directly is admirable, but she could save a lot of time by creating threaded discussion forums. Students could check in there to see if their question has already been answered before posting their own or deciding to email the instructor directly.
In addition, the inclusion of some discussion forum activities, instead of synchronous online seminars, could actually help her students establish a stronger Cognitive Presence because such activities promote high levels of critical thinking (Garrison et al, 1999, p. 93). Such activities could be designed, like these ones, so that students are encouraged to recognize each other’s contributions thus reducing the need for teacher immediacy.
Reference:
Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (1999). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3), 87-105.