"TEACHING TABLES:" Building Community to Improve Student Engagement and Learning Outcomes in an Online Teaching Environment

Abstract

The presentation will examine strategies to build an improved social and cognitive presence among students in an online learning environment. It shall also examine techniques for cultivating an enhanced teaching presence in a distance education course. Recommended strategies for effective social and teaching presence would include community and rapport building activities such as introductory bios, posts and responses by students; instructor accessibility, e-mail messaging; immediacy feedback and motivation. The discussion shall also suggest promoting cognitive presence by providing opportunities for collaborative learning through group projects; lab simulations; role-playing; reflective blogging; and reflective self and peer assessments. The discussion will be of interest to faculty from a range of disciplines as it shall focus on the development of instructional design and the facilitation of online pedagogical processes to ensure students achieve established learning outcomes. An instructional design model, sample syllabus (including evaluation criteria and rubrics), assignments, examples of feedback and e-mail messaging by instructor shall also be presented. Finally, participants will be given a tour of an online course on Blackboard to demonstrate student usability and user-friendliness.