Originak teching presence

Terry Anderson, Liam Rourke, Randy Garrison & Walter Archer (2001)

Assessing Teacher Presence in a computer conferencing context

Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 5, 2, p1-17.

Functions of the teacher

have always been multifaceted.

1. Designer – planning and administering instruction
2. ‘Facilitator and co-creator of the social environment conducive to active and successful learning’, p2
3. subject matter expert who scaffolds the learning

p3 ‘Fulfilling the complex responsibilities of a teacher necessitates sustained and authentic communication between and among teachers and students. While control must be shared and choices provided, the discourse must also be guided towards higher levels of learning through reflective participation as well as by challenging assumptions and diagnosing misconceptions.’

Authors argue that due to the lean medium, teaching presence critical

Support in the literature for the three roles

Theory

Berge (1995) ( identified the three roles but added a fourth, namely supporting the use of technology) Paulsen (1995), and Mason (1991) also identify three major responsibilities but present authors p4‘ depart …. In terms of how we construct and define sthe social aspects of an educational experience’ ie the creation of the social environment is the responsibility of the student as well as the teacher. In the authors’ model ‘ only the social aspects of the teacher’s messages that directly relate to the content contributions from the student are included in the teaching presence category’

Evidence

Rossman(1999) analysis of over 3000 student end-of –course evaluations from 154 university courses; comments and complaints clustered into three major groupings – teacher responsibility, facilitating discussions and course requirements.

Design & organization

P5 ‘ Building the course in a digital format forces teachers to think through the process , structure, evaluation and interaction components of the course. Much of the learned expectation of classroom norms is not available for either student or teacher use, and thus the teacher is forced to be much more explicit and transparent’ e.g. ‘designing and organizing an appropriate mix of group and individual activities’, ‘ modelling appropriate use of the medium’,’sense of the grand design’ ‘ We concur with Laurillard et al, (2000) that the teacher’s task is to create a narrative path through the mediated instruction and activity set such that students are aware of the explicit and implicit learning goals and activities in which they participate. Macro-level comments about course process and content are thus an important motivation and orientation component of this category of teaching presence.

Facilitating discourse

P7 ; the teacher regularly reads and comments on student postings, constantly searching for ways to support the development of the learning community’ ‘ this component overlaps with many of the behaviours identified in our larger model of social presence’…..’’our facilitating discourse category is more than the facilitation of social activities, ……facilitation of discourse is usually integrated within direct instruction and in situ design of instructional activity’ ‘There presence indicates the teacher is helping to create a positive learning environment’’ e.g. helping students articulate consensus and shared understanding, when these are already implicit in the discussion’ Authors see the idea of the tutor as ‘guide on the side’ as too laissez faire e.g. Salmon’s idea that the moderator of online discourse discussions requires no more academically than a similar level qualification’ Authors argue that insufficient academic competence on the part of the teacher or a reluctance to go beyond a facilitating discourse role is one possible explanation for the reports that online discussion often does not go beyond the sharing of information. P9 ‘ The design of effective learning activities leads to opportunities for students themselves to uncover these misconceptions, but the teacher’s comments and questions as direct instruction are also invaluable’

Method

Target variable – teaching presence

Categories(3) organization & instruction, facilitating discourse, direct instruction

Indicators for each category based on the literature & practice of teaching & learning

Examples of each indicator

Unit of analysis – message ‘Each message posted by an instructor was coded as exhibiting or not exhibiting one or more indicators of each of the three categories of teaching presence’ p11 ‘ Ultimately, the validity of this system will be judged according to two criteria: Does the procedure facilitate the objective quantification of the insights that an observer would gain from an informal reading of the transcripts? And does the procedure reveal additional insights that are not apparent from an informal reading’

Frequencies and percentages calculated for instructor messages of two graduate level distance education courses, one in health the other in education. ( no further details available)

Results

Table 5

Frequencies of teaching presence categories by instructor

Health Course				Education Courseb
f		%		f		%
Instructional Design	31		22.3		12		37.5
Facilitating Discourse	60		43.2		24		75.0
Direct Instruction	107		77.0		28		87.5

Note: ^a n of instructor messages =139.

^b n of instructor messages = 32.

Table 6

Frequency and percentage of messages that included 0, 1, 2, or 3 categories of teaching presence

Graduate Health Coursea				Graduate Education Courseb
f		%		f		%
0 categories	1		0.7		0		0.0
1 category	89		64.0		7		21.9
2 categories	42		30.2		15		46.9
3 categories	7		5.0		10		31.3

Note difference in number of postings by each tutor, one responding to every message, the other allowing some of the students to take over the teaching presence role.

paralanguage L& S (1992)

Lea, M & Spears, R. (1992)

Paralanguage and Social Perception in Computer-Mediated Communication

Journal of Organizational Computing, 2(3&4), 321-341

Repeat reading required!

Reviews cues filtered out view

P322/323

‘Information about the communicators themselves – their status, authority, personality, mood, motivations and intentions – are also thought to be largely absent in CMC ( Kiesler, 1986). ‘

Offers an alternative view

Argues that

Paralanguage

P322 ‘paralanguage is one source of information contained in CMC that people use to form impressions of each other when communicating. Furthermore, the interpretation of paralinguistic cues, ….. is influenced by the specific social context in which CMC is situated’ ….

P324 specifically ‘ paralanguage is also present in written communication where it takes the form of typographical marks and other features of text that, although they have no lexical meaning, nevertheless signify socially shared meanings.

Social cognition and SIDE

Links this argument to social cognition and eventually to SIDE. P338 ‘ The SIDE approach to analysisng group processes in CMC places emphasis on cognitive representation of the group rather than on sociostructtural variables such as group size and composition

.

P324 ‘ Experiments into social cognition have revealed some of the processes by which we tend to make significant inferences about people’s personality, emotional state, and behavioural intentions on the basis of mimimal cues’ (Fiske and taylor, 1984) .. The over attribution of enduring traits occurs particularl;y where the behavioural cues are consistently observed, and other information is in short supply (Antaki, 1989)

p324/325

‘communicators will use whatever cues are available to construct impressions of each other; a relative lack of cues will place greater reliance on social categorization processes to interpret the available information so as to form an adequate social context. An implication of this argument is that a relatively simple manipulation of the available cues will exert powerful effects on the impressions formed by interactants. A proposal that is consistent with the authors views on de-individuation in CMC.

Study 1 – communication is delivered to computer screen

Hypoth: If paralanguage provides sufficient cues that contribute to impression formation, significant differences in the perception of message senders should be observed depending on which cues, if any, were present.

2 groups 24 novice, 24 expert e-mail users

Participants encouraged to form an overall impression of the sender

IVs 4 conditions ( 4 messages each, all 16 selected from a public bulletin board edited to manipulate the four conditions. Messages 49-78 in length )

1. Misspelling in two of the words

2. Mistyping in two of the words

3. ! added at the end of 1 sentence and elipse at the end of the other

4. control

DV

16 item 7 point rating scale which asked about the attributes of the interactant – warmth, intelligence, dominance, flexibility, competence, originality, liveliness, self-confidence, verbal fleuncey, responsibility, assertiveness, frredom from inhibitions, inner strength and attractiveness.

Asked to rate how much they thought they would like the sender

Asked to rate how much they would enjoy working with them

Note : therefore a lot of demand characteristics

Results

P328 ‘ Both novice and experienced electronic mail users were found to have attended to the paralinguistic cues contained in the sample messages, and to have formed impressions of the personality of message senders that varied according to the type of cue made available to them’

Stage 2 – participants required to engage in group ( 3 participant) discussions – analysis based on spontaneously generated online discussions

Hypoth: p330 ‘ Paralanguage will be evaluated differently by communicators depending on whether group identity or individual identity is made salient’ i.e paralanguage will be interpreted as prototypical in group salience conditions and as competitive individualism’

Manipulation of context ( social and physical) , 4 conditions based on 2 factors

Social – Encouraged/Discouraged to feel part of a work group or ( using we us, I,me & appropriate design of message header, the way in which the task was introduced, etc)

Physical Isolating individuals/ co-present

DVs

1. Transcrips inspected for evidence of paralanguage – ellipses, inverted commas, quotation marks, and exclamation marks. Sequences were double-weighted. Mean (paralanguage devices combined) counts for each of the four conditions

2. Person-perception scales – global measures of attraction and affect, disinhibition and selected items from stage 1 – warm, dominant, unihibited, responsible’likeable and competent – embedded in a questionnaire that assessed subjects’ opinions on the discussion topics and towards the experimental task.

Results

P333 the patterns of correlations ( DV 1 with DV2 ) is in accordance with the hypothesis concerning the social attraction response to paralanguage users under conditions of high group salience as distict from individualistic and competitive responses under conditions of low group salience ( KRO how to do groups work to create salience …. ? social presence) p335 ‘when visual cues are available, the effects of a group context on the perception of paralinguistic cues in CMC is reduced, as predicted’

Discussion

Impression forming behaviors were consitently observed even when cues were subltle or infrequent .

P335 ‘ many of the largest effects were recorded on those scales that would relate most closely to task performance and co-operative working between individuals

P336 ‘ The nature of these effects was predicted by social identity theory, which holds that when a relevant group membership is made salient to individuals, the positive attributes of the group are conferred on the self, and people tend to act in terms of that group identity. As a consequence of the perceived positive group identity, an individual’s behaviour tends to be in the direction of the prevailing group norms, and the behaviour of the group tends to be perceived in terms of the behaviour of the group. Attraction to the group will be high under these conditions and the adoption of specific communication styles, such as the use of paralanguage, will be seen as prototypical for the group and will be evaluated positively’

Implications for the design of CMCs, implementation and use

P337 ‘ identifying the social context in which any given CMC takes place is essential for predicting the outcomes of the CMC. It follows from this that the establishment of a social context, which is appropriate in terms of individual, group and organizational (KRO – learning) goals and task, is an important prerequisite for successful CMC.

P338 ‘attention should be paid to the provision of more advanced facilities for representing and communicating social information because our analysis suggests that the technology, and the conditions in which it is typically used, combine to form a communication environment that is particularly suited to communicating and reinforcing relevant group and organizational norms’

Murphy - stages of collaboration

Elizabeth Murphy (2004)

Recognising and promoting collaboration in an online asynchronous discussion

British Journal of Educational Technology, 35,4,421-431

Definitions: collaboration (purposive sharing)

Frameworks – conceptual framework for collaboration: interaction, articiculating individual perspectives, accommodating and reflecting on individual perspectives, developing & building shared goals and purposes, producing shared artefacts.

Method Instrument for measuring content based on this framework ie subcodes for each stage

Findings: most did not show any evidence of accommodating to the perspectives of others.

Conclusion: ‘higher level processes of collaboration need to be more explicitly and effectively promoted.

Collaboration

P421 ‘ Collaboration is more than interaction and requires ’coordinated, synchronous activity that is the result of a continued attempt to construct and maintain a shared conception of a problem’ (Roschelle and Teasley, 1995,970). Collaboration represents a ‘purposive relationship’ the intent of which is ‘to produce something to solve a problem, create or discover something’ (Schrage, 1995,29) and to work together to achieve shared goals (Kaye 1992: Rochelle and Tealey, 1995).

(KRO responsible for the emboldened)

p422 ‘ in order for interaction to lead to collaboration in a context of online learning, specific measures must be taken to actively and consciously promote collaboration’

In order to promote collaboration the following are necessary

Understanding of the concept

Understanding how it manifests online

Identification & measurement

Supports and scaffolds that move discussants beyond interaction to collaboration.

Paper is about an identification & measurement instrument. The instrument is based on, p422, ‘ the development of a model which conceptualises collaboration on a continuum of processes that move from social presence to production of an artefact’ This concept gave a preliminary version of the instrument that covered six processes. After application the instrument was further developed to provided indicators for each process.

Conceptual framework for collaboration ( six stage process)

1. Interaction – p 422 ‘ participants show awareness of each other’s presence and begin to relate as a group’ key element is social presence which creates cohesion which feeds back into more interaction.

2. Articulating individual perspectives – p422 participants ‘do not explicitly reference the perspectives of others or solicit feedback from them’ ‘postings at this stage may read like a series of monologues (Henri, 1995)’.

3. Accommodating and reflecting on the perspectives of others

4. Co-constructing shared meaning p423 ‘ as participants articulate and externalise their perspectives, areas of disagreement or conflict become explicit. When individuals’ perspectives are challenged , they must work together to produce shared meaning ( O’Malley, 1995).

5. Developing & building shared goals and purposes

6 Producing shared artefacts

Producing shared artefacts note p423 the author argues that ‘ until this something new has been envisioned and created, collaboration is not complete’ ( KRO is this statement due to the influence of the fostering creativity researchers)..

The author argues that the earlier stage processes are prerequisites for the achievement of shared purpose and goal, but that ‘ participation at the lower levels does not guarantee that higher levels will be automatically reached’

Method

Based on group of eleven ( KRO is this two many, to what extent does collaboration depend on the group and its structure?) practioners ( pre-service teachers of French as a second language) over 4 weeks. Course module involved a three-step approach to collaborative problem solving consult, gather, produce. After each stage individuals are asked to compare individual and joint perspectives. 103 messages.

Instrument & Indicators on page 426-427

Results

P428 ‘ the process/indicator which occurred most often was ‘ articulating individual perspectives: statement of personal opinion or beliefs making no reference to perspectives of others (IO)’ 69/103 messages. Most did not show any evidence of accommodating to the perspectives of others.

Although students did get to the stage of questioning others perspectives P429 ‘ there were only two instances in which a participant directly responded to a question raised by another participant’ i.e. only two instances that meaning was being co-constructed… Only one instance of the fifth process , building a shared solution.

Similarity between these findings and other work

P 429 ‘ findings similar to the conclusion reached by Murphy and Laferriere (2001) in their analysis of two online asynchronous discussion forums using the TORI model of group development. In that study, the groups were moved through three stages

1. Trust formation & Open communication
2. Realisation of goals
3. Interinfluence.

In neither study did participants reach the third stage. ie the individual perspective prevailed.

Conclusion

P430 ‘ the higher level processes of collaboration need to be more explicitly and effectively promoted’