Students report feelings of isolation in learning online and often report difficulty in maintaining engagement. In response, SUNY Oswego developed a comprehensive overlay for existing online courses bundled as the “5 essential elements of online learning”. Tools and strategies were targeted at reinforcing instructor social presence and adding wayfinding elements such as student orientation videos and mobile first communication strategies

1. Supporting Instructor Social Presence and
Learner Wayfinding with 5 Essential Engaging
Elements
https://bit.ly/2GYxg4p
Greg Ketcham, Assistant Dean
Theresa Gilliard-Cook, Senior Instructional Designer
Division of Extended Learning

2. 5 Essential Engaging Elements
● Instructor Bio video
● Instructor Course Introduction video
● Synchronous office hour(s)
● Blackboard student application
● Calendaring of assignments

3. Element Categories
● Instructor Social Presence
○ Instructor Bio video
○ Instructor Course Introduction video
○ Synchronous office hour(s)
● Mobile Communication Strategies/Wayfinding
○ Blackboard student application
○ Calendaring of assignments

4. Instructor Social Presence
● The instructor creates a sense of immediacy and intimacy with his/her
students (Richardson and Lowenthal, 2017)
● Majority of instructor social presence research to date as focused on online
discussion (Lowenthal and Lowenthal, 2010)

5. Examples
Outputs: 104 course and instructor videos produced to date
Demo Reel (no access due to permissions)
The “full George Lucas treatment”: HIS 390 Course Introduction (no access due to
permissions)
HIS 390 - Harems, Bathhouses, and Brothels: Society, Gender, and Sexuality in the Early Modern Islamic
World

6. Student perceptions
● Bio/course intro videos provide students the opportunity to feel they are
getting to know their instructor and feel that the instructor is interested in their
success (Guo et al, 2014, Hibbert 2014)
● Provides opportunity for multi-modal learning particularly with script
● “Humanizing”
● Overarching student perceptions is that they felt more connected in a majority
of cases as they felt they had a better sense of who their instructor is/was
● Social presence was a critical component of the online course experience
(Dunlap and Lowenthal, 2014)

7. Mobile Communication Strategies/Wayfinding
● Blackboard student application
○ Announcements/notifications
○ Grade center
● Calendaring of assignments
○ Promotes time on task (Chickering & Gamson,1989)
○ “Landmarks” for wayfinding(connectivism)(Seimens, 2011)

8. References:
Anderson, T., Rourke, L., Garrison, R., & Archer, W. (2001). Assessing teaching presence in a computer conferencing context. Journal of
Asynchronous Learning Networks, 5(2).
Borup, J., West, R.E., & Graham, C.R. (2011), Improving online social presence through asynchronous video. Internet and Higher Education,
15(2012), 195-203.
Chickering, A. W., & Gamson, Z. F. (July 01, 1989). Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education. Biochemical Education, 17, 3,
140‐141.
Clinefelter,D.L., and Aslanian, C.B. (2017). Online College Students 2017: Comprehensive data on demands and preferences.Louisville, KY: The
Learning House, Inc.
Dunlap, J.C., & Lowenthal, P.R. (2014). The power of presence: Our quest for the right mix of social presence in online courses. In A.P. Mizell & A. A.
Piña (Eds.) Real life distance education: Case studies in practice. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Guo, P.J, Kim, J., & Rubin, R. (2014). How video production affects student engagement: an empirical study of MOOC videos. In Proceedings of the
first ACM conference on Learning @ scale conference (L@S '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 41-50.
DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2556325.2566239.

9. References:
Hansch, A., Hillers, L., McConachie, K., Newman, C., Schildhauer, T., & Schmidt, P. (2015). Video and online learning: Critical reflections and
findings from the field.
Hibbert, M. (2014). What Makes an Online Instructional Video Compelling? Educause Review. Retrieved from
https://er.educause.edu/articles/2014/4/what-makes-an-online-instructional-video-compelling.
Jones, P., Naugle, K., & Kolloff, M. (2008). Teacher Presence: Using Introductory Videos in Online and Hybrid Courses. Learning Solutions
Magazine
Li, L., & Pitts, J. P. (2009). Does it really matter? Using virtual office hours to enhance student-faculty interaction. Journal of Information Systems
Education, 20(2), 175.
Lowenthal, D.A. and Lowenthal, P.R. (2010). A Mixed Methods Examination of Instructor Social Presence in Accelerated Online Courses. Paper
presented at the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association, Denver, CO.
Lowenthal, P. R. (2015). A mixed methods examination of instructor social presence in accelerated online courses. Handbook of Research on
Strategic Management of Interaction, Presence, and Participation in Online Courses, 147.

10. References:
Open SUNY Course Quality Review (OSCQR) Rubric and Process, 3rd Edition. Retrieved from
https://bbsupport.sln.suny.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/OSCQR/OSCQR%20Assets/OSCQR%203rd%20Edition.pdf
Richardson, J. C., & Lowenthal, P. (2017). INSTRUCTOR SOCIAL PRESENCE: A NEGLECTED COMPONENT OF THE COMMUNITY OF
INQUIRY. In The International Scientific Conference eLearning and Software for Education (Vol. 2, p. 531). " Carol I" National Defence University.
Siemens, G. (2011). Orientation: Sensemaking and wayfinding in complex distributed online information environments (Doctoral dissertation,
University of Aberdeen).
Standards from the Quality Matters Higher Education Rubric, 5th Edition. Quality Matters. Retrieved from
https://www.qualitymatters.org/sites/default/files/PDFs/StandardsfromtheQMHigherEducationRubric.pdf

11. QR Code