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Happy New Year! This marks the 12th edition of the Design Matters Digest, a monthly newsletter that explores various elements of online course design and the research that can help you improve your Canvas courses. To start the year, we’re exploring the impact of instructor presence and how course design can facilitate student-instructor interaction.
“…frequent and effective student–instructor interaction creates an online environment that encourages students to commit themselves to the course and perform at a stronger academic level.”
(Jaggars & Xu, 2016).
Decades of research have shown student-instructor interaction to be a key predictor of online course outcomes, including student retention, performance, and satisfaction (Jaggars & Xu, 2016; Katsarou & Chatzipanagiotou, 2021). Yet maintaining instructor presence and facilitating effective interactions in a Canvas course isn’t always as simple as translating what works for in-person interactions into an online space.
Instead, a growing body of course design research and best practices suggest capitalizing on technology’s strengths to help learners “see” and “hear from” their instructors in a course. Just like the title of these digests suggest: design matters! With strategic course design, it’s possible to infuse instructor presence throughout a Canvas course and save time for powerful, personalized interactions.
Let’s explore simple tips for increasing instructor presence and interaction and some tools that help turn that goal into reality!
Design for presence throughout the course. Designing for consistent instructor presence, from the first interaction to the last, can make a big impact by humanizing the digital learning experience and boosting a learner’s sense of belonging (Gordon, 2017; Jaggers et al., 2013; Kizilcec et al., 2020). Start establishing a presence by greeting learners at the digital “door” with a welcome message on the course Home Page, either using text and a picture or a recorded video. From there, instructors can “show up” throughout the learning process by moderating class discussions and by adding context or connections, in their own voice, to content pages and announcements. And consistently placing easy-access links to office hours or instructor contact throughout the course reminds students that instructors are “there” to support them–even when they can’t see anyone!
Leverage a feedback “system”. Save time and provide more support with a layered feedback approach! Adding automatic feedback to no- or low-stakes knowledge checks throughout the course allows instructors to infuse their presence and connect students to helpful resources (Rotar, 2022). If patterns emerge in student performance, consider communicating those patterns to the whole class on a “module wrap-up” page or via an announcement following an assessment. And, of course, don’t forget the importance of personalized feedback, which has been shown to be highly effective in improving both student learning and connectedness (Gallien & Oomen-Early, 2008; Means & Neisler, 2021; Steele & Holbeck, 2018); with a well-designed feedback system, you’ve saved more time for these rich interactions!
Support the goal. Let’s face it: increasing instructor presence across all Canvas courses requires time, effort, and tech skills! Consider supporting consistent instructor presence and interaction from the institution level through a simple course checklist that defines a few key strategies and links relevant resources. You can lighten the lift further with templates; designing templates with text suggestions and the strategies above, built right in, can give instructors a helpful jumpstart. These efforts support students feeling consistently connected to their instructors and the learning content–and ultimately to the institution!
“ReadyGO has been a godsend in terms of our course setup and keeping track of who’s doing what in their courses. We’re a two-person team in charge of over 200 courses and ReadyGO allows us to identify course setup progress, tag high- and low-priority courses, and keep track of action items via checklists.”
– Lauren Schwartz, Academic Technology Coordinator, Salem Community College
Learn More: To see this Digest come to life, join us for our Design Matters Live! webinar “Increasing Instructor Presence and Interaction.” We’ll dive deeper into the research behind this digest edition and showcase amazing examples of how our tools can help educators design course content infused with instructor presence and enable institutions to track and support instructor interaction across your institution.
Take effective interaction a step further with ObservEd! Designed for academic advisors, athletic staff, equity offices, disability resource centers and more, ObservEd gives your staff the ability to observe their students’ academic performance in Canvas in real-time and communicate proactively, without any privacy or security concerns.
Interested in learning other ways social presence impacts learning outcomes? Check out our recent webinar “Designing for a Sense of Belonging” where we shared research-backed tips to promote student belonging in and across your courses.
Do you know someone who would like to receive our Design Matters Digest? Tell them they can subscribe here. Interested in more Design Matters content? Check out our webinar series and read past editions of the Digest.
Citations:
Gallien, T., & Oomen-Early, J. (2008, July). Personalized versus collective instructor feedback in the online courseroom: Does type of feedback affect student satisfaction, academic performance and perceived connectedness with the instructor?. In International Journal on E-learning (Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 463-476). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).
Gordon, J. (2017). Creating Social Cues through Self-Disclosures, Stories, and Paralanguage: The Importance of Modeling High Social Presence Behaviors in Online Courses. In Social Presence in Online Learning (pp. 99-112). Routledge.
Jaggars, S. S., Edgecombe, N., & Stacey, G. W. (2013). Creating an Effective Online Instructor Presence. Community College Research Center, Columbia University.
Jaggars, S. S., & Xu, D. (2016). How do online course design features influence student performance?. Computers & Education, 95, 270-284.
Katsarou, E., & Chatzipanagiotou, P. (2021). A critical review of selected literature on learner-centered interactions in online learning. Electronic Journal of E-Learning, 19(5), 349-362.
Kizilcec, René & Saltarelli, Andrew & Bonfert-Taylor, Petra & Goudzwaard, Michael & Hamonic, Ella & Sharrock, Rémi. (2020). Welcome to the Course: Early Social Cues Influence Women’s Persistence in Computer Science. 1-13. 10.1145/3313831.3376752.
Means, B., & Neisler, J. (2021). Teaching and learning in the time of COVID: The student perspective. Online Learning, 25(1).
Rotar, O. Online student support: a framework for embedding support interventions into the online learning cycle. RPTEL 17, 2 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41039-021-00178-4
Steele, J., & Holbeck, R. (2018). Five elements that impact quality feedback in the online asynchronous classroom. Journal of Educators Online, 15(3), n3.
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