My experience with Distance Learning began earlier than most in my generation. I ‘attended’ grades 8 through 12 via correspondence learning. This differs from home schooling, in that there is no direct involvement in correspondence learning by a parent. Course content was delivered in large binders of information and exercise sheets, and via textbooks. There were assignments and exams, with written responses from a teacher. It’s probably that those teachers were available to talk to on the phone, but I was never sure what I would talk to them about. There was zero interaction with other correspondence students. I did quite well, generally, at achieving good grades, including in standard provincial exams. Further, it seemed that I was reasonably well-prepared for success in undergraduate studies at university.

My most remarkable experience in online learning was earlier this year, in EDCI 335. The course, as presented by the instructor, was approximately 12 readings (articles – almost entirely by the instructor) and four assignments. Three of the assignments were to be done in a group with other students, and those accounted for 80% of the final grade. I was extremely fortunate to find a group of co-students to work with, all of whom were committed to excellence. As a group, we produced the equivalent of over 150 pages of deliverable assignment submissions. More importantly, as we worked through the assignments, we gave ourselves tasks and regularly met on Zoom for multiple hours at a time to discuss and refine what each of us had produced. My took each other very seriously and we laughed, argued, commiserated, reflected and built an incredibly rich understanding of Learning Design (the topic of the course).

If I’m to look at both experiences with the lens of the Community of Inquiry framework, they both leave me wondering about instructor presence. While both learning experiences could be said to be carefully planned, the only instances of instructors making themselves present came in the form of feedback to assignment submissions. As we read in a Week 3 article, the most common understanding of teacher presence is binary: it manifests in the design and facilitation of the learning experience (Barnes, 2016). While my two experiences attested to careful design, neither included meaningful facilitation. As a teenager, any learning I achieved beyond consumption and repetition of knowledge was due to my own efforts at cognitive presence. As an adult, I also benefited from the motivated social presence of my peers. From the teacher perspective, both learning experiences were ‘set it and forget it’.

The latter case makes me wonder especially about the role of instructor presence. While my group was, as mentioned, extraordinarily self-motivating, I can well imagine that other groups may have had less committed memberships and may have benefitted from teacher “communication prompts, feedback, and guidance” (Barnes, 2016) to keep them on track.

References

Barnes, C. (2016) Where’s the Teacher? Defining the Role of Instructor Presence in Social Presence and Cognition in Online Education. In W. Kilgore, Humanizing Online Teaching and Learning, 2016, licensed under CC by 4.0.