Presence in Digital Practice
No matter what TPC activity takes place online, it is done at a distance. Even the ubiquitous professional email puts stakeholders together across space and time mediated by technology and tries to convince the parties (often unsuccessfully) of each other's humanity–their human presence twice removed by texts and screens (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000). It is the distance between TPC educators and students in the current era of online learning technology that many are trying to overcome with a powerful, persistent focus on creating presence in the virtual classroom (Wan, 2020; Harris & Greer, 2021,). But, as we have learned these many months, just because our institutions have implemented flashy new tools “that appear to ensure human presence,” that is not always the case (Gallagher & Vance, 2021, p. 56).
As a TPC professor, I am no stranger to the desire to create human presence in our communications. In my introduction courses, students and I always cover the importance of being personable in electronic communication. I stress the importance of humanizing statements and building you-attitude. Humanizing statements, I teach, help us maintain “social presence” (Garrison, 2009) and connections through care, respect, and interest in others. Using you-attitude, I argue, professionals may share the valuable message that they care about each other’s time, effort, needs, and expectations. These rhetorical moves are common. I imagine many of us use them with greater or lesser effect to try and preserve shared humanity in our many digital messages (Onyeator & Okpara, 2019). This preservation of humanity, foundationally, is the importance of mindfulness and presentness in our digital communication that I want to address-–the presence of the human element in digital TPC classroom communication.
According to the International Society for Presence Research (2000), technologically mediated presence (sometimes referred to as telepresence) is the immediacy of experiencing other people remotely wherein the mediating technology is overlooked to the extent that it is “perceived as if the technology was not involved in the experience” (para. [1]). In the context of teaching, the human element is ever present when we are inside a physical classroom together; it is an embodied, physical presence in a shared space (Gallagher, Meister, Russell, 2021). When a teacher is in front of the class, they can use any and all modes of communication to play upon the senses of the students. However, the presentness of teachers and students is often absent when classroom interaction takes place through technology synchronously and/or asynchronously.
Per Martinez, Mechenbier, Hewett, Meloncon, Harris, St.Amant, Phillips, & Bodnars’ (2019) survey of mainly online TPC students, social presence oriented activities for online writing (e.g. discussions, message threads, and other interactive multimedia) were identified as unsatisfying and of little value to student learning. Seemingly, students were not convinced of an interlocutor’s presence. However, when peer-to-peer review or instructor feedback were provided, students found these exchanges more advantageous to their learning. This accords with earlier findings on the importance of presence within a classroom “community of inquiry” discovered by Stewart’s (2017) case study of writing students online.
According to Stewart (2017), when students experience a decrease in the amount of human presence in their classes–be it social, teaching, or cognitive–their potential to learn from each other and to collaborate on creating knowledge diminishes (p. 72). This finding is purported in the work of Gallagher & Vance (2021), who offer, “during the pandemic, a reduction in human presence has weakened collaborative innovation in the workplace” (p. 56) for the same reason suggested by Stewart. To that end, observing students using asynchronous discussions, working in shared Google docs, and chatting during a synchronous seminar, Stewart found that the key for student success relies not on the tools, but on designing online course activities “with the goals of social, teaching, and cognitive presence established” (p. 79). For Stewart, Gallagher, and Vance, it is not so much the “media richness” of a specific collaborative tool or interactive technology used in an online class that makes presence possible. Instead, it is the scaffolding provided by the instructor and the encouragement of the participants that improves both teaching and learning experiences in the mediated classroom via presence.
No matter what technologies are ready-to-hand, if a course is asynchronous, synchronous, or hybrid, the current research suggests that attention to presence in TPC pedagogy is the key to successful teaching and learning. Building presence requires effort, dedication, and nurturing for any virtual class. But, our path toward presence is not an easy one. For example, regarding asynchronous TPC courses, many faculty and students believe that the learning takes place between the student and the LMS content. Harris and Greer (2021) state that “the assignments, readings, and course materials in online classes…take the place of instructors” in these situations (p. 34). Students, they indicate, “feel less attached to their online instructors and… less engaged in online courses” (p. 34). Unfortunately, these beliefs and consequences are not limited to asynchronous environments.
In some synchronous courses, the same weakened student connection may occur. Even if a course includes real-time audio and video dialogue, screen-captured videos, and online collaborative assignments, the ability to be mostly or completely muted disrupts presence. This disruption is not new. In Stewart’s (2017) study of students co-authoring in Google Docs, she found that if students were not prompted to discuss, reflect, and share while they were “together” in the space, they barely spoke (pp. 76-77). If either the instructor or student-peers seem to be or are absent in either asynchronous or synchronous situations, then there is a prevailing sensation or the felt experience that no “people” are present. Thus, it is no wonder that Gallagher & Vance (2021) see the digital interactions of the pandemic era as not effectively supporting collaboration, sharing, scaffolded learning, and knowledge creation like what is possible in the in-person classroom. But, reinforcing presence may be a powerful catalyst for learning, especially in a field like TPC where many professionals work in integrated teams or collaborate with subject matter experts face-to-face and online. So, how can we improve the human element, our presence, to greater teaching and learning effect in online TPC courses? Also, how can this be achieved if we are concerned about stakeholders’ personal and data privacy? This study aims to answer these important questions.
