How To Make Your Online Lessons More Successful

"Distance education is boring... Distance education doesn't work..." It's not the distance education that's bothering your students, it's the way you're handling it. Here's a way to make your online lessons more successful:

Social Presence: It is the sense of togetherness, students should feel that they are being perceived as real people and not just anonymous online users. To make your students feel more comfortable and have a social presence, you can start your lessons with some tasks that bring your students together. For example, asking your students to describe how they're feeling at the moment would help them feel like they're seen as a real person and have higher motivation in class.

Transactional Presence: It is feeling connected to others. It means students sharing the knowledge they have to their peers. This also brings a sense of togetherness among students with exchanging information. For example, you can choose a few volunteers in class to explain that day's topic to their classmates, and when they're finished, another student can go on.

Cognitive Presence: It is what we call to learners constructing knowledge through sustained reflection. It's not possible to have the knowledge of not knowing (😁) if you're on your own. We need to be perceived by other people to have an idea of what we know or don't know. It also means how you take new information, how you analyze it and how you discuss it among other students. For example, you can put your students in a number of groups and ask them to have a discussion of the new information they're given. The main idea of it to make students more active in your class and encourage them to learn together.

Teaching Presence: It is the design, facilitation and direction of cognitive and social presences. The teacher creates content for the class beforehand and creates tasks. Teacher has the role of a facilitator, helping students when they need it but not act as the one and only figure in class (because like we have said in cognitive presence, students shouldn't be passive). You shouldn't give all the information in one go, be aware of your students' capacities and slowly help them learn the new information, without causing cognitive load.

With these four "presences", you will see your distance education experience isn't bad at all!