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Getting to
KnowYou:
Establishing Instructor Presence
Dr. Michelle Kilburn,
Associate Professor, Criminal Justice
As an instructor who strives to make a
connection with all my students, I remember
staring at the blinking cursor on my computer
screen and thinking
“How are my students
going to know there is someone on the other
side of this computer? How will they know I
am really here and that I have not just ‘flipped
a switch” to start my course and am now
sitting on a beach somewhere while they
spend hours reading and working through
the material? By the end of the semester, will
they know their computer better than they
know me?”
Answering the question of how
to interact with students is a challenge for
many instructors, both veteran and rookie.
This short piece is a conglomeration of
literature review, personal experiences, and
best practices I have accrued as an online
instructor, master quality matters reviewer,
interim instructional designer, and former
director of Southeast Online.
At the basic level, Moore and Kearley (2005)
discuss three primary types of interaction
in distance education: student-to-content,
student-to-instructor, and student-to-student.
There is a discussion as to whether there
should be a fourth interaction, student-to-
interface (Gunawardena, 1994). Regardless,
framing your course from the perspective of
making sure your students interact with each
other, the content (or course materials) and
the instructor is a great way to assure you are
incorporating, not only your presence, but also
creating a sense of community within your
course. To effectively discuss how to establish
instructor presence, we are going to focus on
student-to-instructor interaction.
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