Module 2. Reflecting on teaching presence (video)

Teaching presence is crucial. As I won’t be physically there I need to think about ways of still being present. If I teach synchronously then I’m there in real time, but at other times I won’t be present .

I agree with the idea of lightweight teaching presence with emphasis on the fact that students work as a community coming together and solving problems together and as a Lecturer I can let them solve the problems first, find answers to questions and then intervene with my own, if needed. It is good to have an idea of how long this presence might be, so for instance, 2h a month for each course, although for the MSc I think I would need more as I teach 2h sessions on different topics, so perhaps 30-45 minutes per class?

I like the idea of Google hangouts (once a month or every other month) where you answer student’s questions. You put a thread in a forum with the topic of the hangout (when and how long it will be), email that link to the students a week in advance. Then students can ask questions before the hangout and you can be prepared. I have never worked with Google hangouts so would need to either look into or find alternatives? I would think a hangout can be 1h every other month and could be with other teaching staff as we teach different topics in each course.

I like the idea of prompts in videos to tell students to post answers in forums, also in emails (and how about this? Link in the forum).

In the forums I see my role as encouraging discussions but leave spacing. Difference of interaction whether it’s 70,000 or 20 students (e.g. wait more if there are more students).

So for our main course on translation theories we can give ‘prompts’ at the end of each lecture with a link to the forum and ask students to answer the questions in the forum. We can also do this by email. My first choice would be prompts in lectures and then if the students do not engage, send a prompt in an email. I would need to give the students a deadline, as we teach different topics every week. I would check the answers e.g. a few days before the deadline and if there isn’t a lot of answers/discussions I would send a prompt by email. Then I would check the day before the deadline and see what I need to contribute. I would need to see how I can make this time efficient.