A Developing Philosophy for Maximizing Human Presence in Online Learning Environments
Establishing a human presence in online courses is imperative. Pairing professor content expertise and knowledge with the benefits of online learning environments give faculty the opportunity to provide a unique virtual classroom experience. Fortunately, faculty don’t need a degree in experience architecture to be successful, only a guiding philosophy and some thoughtful planning. As part of my ongoing effort to establish a human presence in my online learning environments, I have begun creating short videos. These particular videos aren’t meant to be particularly informative, although they do contain information. All the information in the videos is also available in the online course site and/or in the text. The goal of the videos is to give a ‘face’ to the instruction with the hope that students will not feel so isolated from the course. A few principles & practices of these videos: Like a class session, the videos aren’t meant to be perfect. I don’...