Two reasons why we need presence in an online class.

1. Presence Promotes Student Success 

Research suggests presence is a key factor in student engagement, a metric for predicting student success in online coursework. Presence in this context also considers student perceptions in instructor involvement as a central factor. High levels of engagement lead to higher levels of student achievement, deeper satisfaction, and a greater likelihood of retention and/ or graduation. (Oblinger, 2014 Links to an external site.)

In the following video Dr. Mark Kassel, Director of Chatham Online at Chatham University discusses ways in which he brings presence to his online courses.

 

reading_no_background.pngAlso, read more about instructor presence in  Download this article called Teaching Presence Online Facilitates Meaningful Learning

, by Patrick Lowenthal of Boise State University. Lowethal focuses more on the reasons for developing presence into your course as well as strategies for doing it. Read the following article before continuing on this page. 

2. Financial Aid Compliance

Being present in your online class is not only about good practice and student success.

  • The US Department of Education and the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) have defined the difference between "distance education" and "correspondence education" based largely on the idea of "regular and substantive" interaction between the students and the instructor.
    Regular can be defined as periodic and can be broadly interpreted, but should be understood as predictable and built into course design.
    Substantive refers to interaction with a student that is relevant to the academic subject matter in which the student is engaged. (As compared to logistics like due dates and grades.)
  • Students generally can't use federal financial aid to pay for correspondence education Links to an external site.. Online "distance education" courses, for which students may use financial aid, must have significant faculty-student interaction.
  • The definition also notes that the interaction cannot be primarily initiated by the student, but rather be instructor initiated.  
  • Simply referring students to textual materials online, along with exams or quizzes, will not meet the federal "distance learning" guidelines and will be classified as a correspondence course.

 

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