Rosemary Lehman and Simone Conceicao presented their framework featured in two books they have written.I am all for transparency but their book plugging put me off for awhile, before I could get into their framework. Essentially they argued for creating a sense of presence, activity, caring by the instructor for students and how that is done and shown throughout a course. Elsewhere I had heard a faculty member who teaches attachment theory reflect on early childhood attachment and the parallels to students and courses: that they need to attach early or it will be very hard to develop later. The instructors are arguring for a variety of ways for showing your presence and caring early in a course with guidelines, feedback, modeling discussion and so on.
Using a design framework for creating a sense of presence
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Interesting comments, Ron. I can add some credence to what you're saying - I've taught a fully on-line course twice. The first time I was in Thailand when the course started and had intermittent access to a computer. So it was about 3 weeks before I really connected with the students. Didn't ever really feel like students were engaged. Second time I did a lot more communicating up front, particularly making some comment after each of their self-introductions during the first week of the course. Could have been a variety of things... or perhaps it was me who was more attached to the students rather than the students more attached to me. Guess that's a two way street! Anyway, I think the attachment ideas are worth considering. Thanks for sharing this.