• How has your view of the effective practice changed now that you have read more about teaching presence?

 

I found it very interesting that there was such strong differences in practice between the two different courses that were used in the study conducted by Anderson et al. While the sample set is too small to draw any conclusions, it would suggest to me that effective practice is highly variable with subject matter.

 

 

• In what ways did the effective practice that you identified show the characteristics of teaching presence?

 

In retrospect, my example of what I thought was an effective practice was actually a poor example of teaching presence. My example of online lab simulations showed the importance of design and organization. These simulations were meticulously created to allow the students to experience the labs and adjust parameters and instantaneously view the results. However, once the simulations were created there was no discourse or direct instruction.

 

• How could the idea of teaching presence have made the experience even more effective than it was?

 

Interestingly, one of the aspects of my experience that made it an effective learning tool was that there was low teaching presence. This allowed me to feel comfortable to learn at my own pace and experiment on my own. There was no discourse or direct instruction. However, the experience could have been more effective if the teacher had encouraged discussion about our results and directed our experimentation.