Unit 3: Designing for Instructor Presence
Welcome to Unit Three: Designing for Instructor Presence!
In Unit 1 and Unit 2, you reflected on why building instructor presence is important, and how humanizing your course helps create connections with your students.
In Unit 3, you will be asked to review the tools available to support instructor presence and humanizing your course, and to create an instructor presence/humanizing roadmap for your own course.
Let's Get Started!
As we know, it's important to understand the theoretical background of instructor presence as we explored in Unit One. Now, we want to focus on the "how" of building instructor presence.
To begin, please read the following articles which will provide you with practical tips and suggestions for implementing instructor presence into your course.
Behaviors & Strategies for Improving Online Instructor Presence
Maintaining a Strong Instructor Presence Online: Why and How
Five Strategies for Enhancing Instructor Presence in Online Courses
Ideas for Creating an Effective Syllabus for Online LearningFaculty Focus, June 4, 2018
Tool Resources
The following list is a list of tools for your consideration as you begin to think about what tools you will use to support building instructor presence and humanizing your online course.
The Humanizing Tool Buffet is a wonderful library of tools aggregated by the California State University system
FlipGrid is a free tool for Educators! Students can respond to prompts and questions using video.
Padlet allows students to collaboratively build boards, documents and webpages.
Screencast-o-matic is a screencasting tool with a free and paid version
Loom is a free screencasting tool.
Using VoiceThread students can engage in asynchronous conversations around media files using voice, video or text.
AnswerGarden is a free tool that can be used as a brainstorming tool and encourages active learning. The visual element is a great way to engage students.
Use Animoto to create free videos in minutes.
Building Instructor Presence
Now it's time to lay the foundation for putting our plans in motion. Considering the resources provided in Unit Three, there are two tasks to complete.
First, take some time to access our tool library and add a tool that you plan to use to support instructor presence in your course, and/or to humanize your course. You can use the Tool Resources provided in this unit or you can search on the internet to find other tools that intrigue you and support the learning goals of your online course. Ask yourself: What tools intrigue me? What tools do I want to know more about?
Once you have identified a tool, add it to our tool library on Google Docs.
The second task is to create a roadmap for building instructor presence and humanizing your online course. Create an instructor presence roadmap using the provided template.
Ask yourself:
- How will I create instructor presence and humanize my online course?
- How will I infuse "Me" into the course?
- What do I want students to know about me and the course?
- How will I connect with my students and lay the foundation for a community of learners?
- What opportunities will I provide for students to connect with each other?
Please be sure to make a copy of the template first! Then edit the template to complete the assignment.
This roadmap is for your personal use. The goal is for you to organize your ideas and strategies for building instructor presence and humanizing your online course. Once you have your ideas and strategies outlined on the template, it will make it easier for you to implement those strategies as you build a new online course, or update an existing online course.
