instruction – Human Jungle

Pacing and Presence

“I have noticed a deep division between those who yearn for the immediacy of real-time communication, and those who are adamant that they have chosen online learning alternatives to avoid the time constraints imposed by synchronous or paced learning activities.” (Anderson, p. 349)

I suspect this is a false dichotomy, and that the vast majority of us want a blend or happy medium of the two modes — we want some asynchronous flexibility within a paced environment. Pacing is a major reason why we take courses — without it, we would flounder and never complete our studies.

“there are still opportunities to inject more than
text-based lectures and discussions into the course” (Anderson, p. 349)

Indeed, there are. As I’ve noted in other posts, however, this has very rarely happened during the course of my MET studies. Evidently “presence” isn’t highly valued in the cerebral world of graduate studies, and yet I would have expected to see more in the ed tech discipline. Instructors have been assiduous in fostering “trust formation” (Anderson, p. 350), but not presence.

Avatars

And what of student-to-student presence (as distinct from teacher-to-student)? Why not have students establish profiles that are accessible (for reference) throughout the course? Why not photos next to our posts, as in Facebook? Why not avatars? All we ever have are names — not a lot of presence to go on, frankly. My fellow students are strangely abstract to me. Would posting profiles undermine the students’ trust formation (e.g., their freedom to speak their minds in the discourse community)?

Posting introductory comments at the outset does, as Anderson states, facilitate trust formation, and I agree that’s important. But it doesn’t contribute much to ongoing presence throughout the course. By and large, I can’t remember who said what about him- or herself in the first week, and so all I see are disembodied names.

Assumed? Or delegated?

The creation of teaching presence is not always the sole task of the formal teacher. In many contexts, especially when teaching at senior levels, teaching presence is delegated to or assumed by students as they contribute their own skills and knowledge to the developing learning community (Anderson, 2008).

It’s funny to come across this statement in the final course of my MET. In several courses I’ve wondered at the complete absence of “formal” teaching presence. At first it was slightly unnerving or mystifying; then I assumed that the ETEC instructors were demonstrating (at least implicitly) a radically Constructivist form of social learning. Then I ceased thinking about it much at all. I’m glad that Anderson finally said it — and that he noted, “especially when teaching at senior levels.”

So, has teaching presence in these MET courses been “delegated to or assumed by students”? Both, really. (What other instructional techniques better suited to senior students are at work in this course? Lots of reflective learning, in the form of these blogs. Perhaps some negotiated content, in that we determine the learning context of our Moodle projects.)

It also strikes me that no direct parallel appears to exist in classroom teaching — i.e., an instructor couldn’t simply be “absent” from class-wide discussions throughout a course, although students might be assigned to smaller discussion groups (somewhat analogous to our discussion threads, which are spontaneous) that convene regularly, e.g. for a portion of every class (however, even in that case, an instructor’s consistent “non presence” would be very unusual).