Presence contributes greatly to creating meaningful and impactful learning experiences. This blog series will give you some tried-and-true strategies for building teaching, social, and cognitive presence in your classes. Also provided are some suggested approaches to addressing common challenges. This post will wrap up the series by focusing on teaching presence.
Presence contributes greatly to creating meaningful and impactful learning experiences. In this blog series we will highlight some tried-and-true strategies for building teaching, social, and cognitive presence in your classes. Also provided are some suggested approaches to addressing common challenges. This post will focus on cognitive presence.
Presence contributes greatly to creating meaningful and impactful learning experiences. In this blog series we'll highlight some tried-and-true strategies for building teaching, social, and cognitive presence in your classes. Also provided are some suggested approaches to addressing common challenges. In this post, we'll be focusing on Social Presence.

There are so many gadgets out there - laptops, smartphones, tablets, to name a few. Nowadays, there is an app for everything. Apps can be downloaded and become beneficial in your Online Classroom for several reasons! They can improve student communication, promote collaboration and create stronger relationships between students and faculty.

Asynchronous courses are a cornerstone of online learning. At the same time, asynchronous courses present challenges in terms of self-motivation, community-based learning, and combating feelings of isolation. One approach to addressing some of these challenges is to add synchronous elements to your online course. When used correctly, synchronous elements can add a layer of direct interaction and engagement that doesn’t detract from the benefits of the asynchronous format. However, adding synchronous elements isn’t as easy as just setting up regular meeting times. We need to plan with purpose, diligence, and a bit of creativity.

Using an approach of "outreach hours" as opposed to typical office hours fits in perfectly with the Community of Inquiry model that we often refer to in our work with faculty. I see it as an expansion of what teaching presence can look like in the online classroom, along with infusing both social and cognitive presence into the activity as well. That’s perhaps what I like about it most; by rethinking what our traditional office hours look like online, we can engage students more deeply in the tenets of the Community of Inquiry and help improve success.

Are you nervous about diving into online education? Want to expand your reach beyond your current online course or program? Then join me for a 20 minute interview on online education and advocacy with Dr. Amos Bailey.

Social media has many engaging and interactive factors that can be translated into the online environment to increase student engagement. So why not consider incorporating social media content and tools into the online classroom? Let’s take a look at 4 tips for making your online classroom more S O C I A L.

Instructional design is a fully-formed, stand-alone professional discipline focused on teaching and pedagogy. It is a proactive, collaborative approach to conceptualizing and creating learning materials, fostering learner community and inquiry, and empowering learners and teachers to make intentional decisions about what and how they learn. That being said, instructional design processes and functions look different at different institutions. Read on to learn more about our instructional design team's philosophy and strategy when working with CU faculty.

Focusing on our mental and physical health is something we should try to do every day--with the events of the past year and a half it is now more important than ever. To make it easy for you we’ve pulled together some selected resources for students to download and include in your course as you are making your updates in preparation for the new term.

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