QM: Creating Presence in Your Online Course

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This winter I am working toward adding a new credential to my learning: Quality Matter's Teaching Online Certificate. This well-established and highly respected organization has put together a series of workshops that focuses on best practices of online teaching. I plan to reflect on each workshop as I complete them as a way to model metacognition. This post is 3 of 8. 

In this workshop I spent time thinking about how I create presence for students in my online graduate courses. We expect our students to make a commitment to engage in our courses- we need to make a commitment to them, as well, to be present even when we aren't face-to-face. 

The overarching theme of this workshop centers on the Community of Inquiry framework which states that effective online courses contain three types of entangled interactions:

  1. Social Presence- how students connect with the class community.
  2. Cognitive Presence- how students are able to construct and infer meaning from course content through reflection and discourse.
  3. Teaching Presence- the design, facilitation and direction of both the cognitive and social processes to helps students form deeper connections.
This video does a nice job of explaining all 3.


There weren't many new concepts I took from this workshop but it was a great way to reflect on how I strive to be present. I've presented on this in the ISTE Higher Ed playground and routinely do self-reflections on my courses.

One thing I did do as a result of this content was to create a document that shows the interconnectedness of the Community of Inquiry framework, Moore's 3 Types of Interactions, and Chickering & Gamson's 7 Principles for Good Practice. 

In the image below, these three concepts are combined into a bullseye graphic. The outer-gray circle represents context that we need to consider when designing online courses. The next circle inside the bullseye represents the Instructor. The Instructor is responsible for setting the tone for the inner circles; the social and cognitive aspects of the course. The next circle in represents the Student. Notice this circle touches both the Instructor and content areas. Finally, the center of the bullseye represents the course content- the center of the course and that which everything is based on.

Bullseye graphic showing three framework interactions.

Online presence is so important, especially in asynchronous courses! Here are a few helpful resources I plan to revisit.

Strategies for Promoting Cognitive Presence in Your Online Course

Humanizing Online Teaching & Learning

Ten Strategies for Fostering Instructor Presence in Online Courses





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