Dr. Beyza Lorenz, Continuing Lecturer in Turkish at the Near Eastern Languages and Cultures Department won an EPIC-Lang grant to develop a self-paced, online module to help language instructors get acquainted with online language teaching. The project titled “Establishing Online Presence” is an online tutorial to introduce language instructors to establishing presence in the online classroom and increasing online teaching effectiveness across UCLA. The target audience of “Establishing Online Presence” is primarily language instructors and teaching assistants in language classes. However, college instructors of all ranks, including adjunct instructors, assistant professors, associate professors, and full professors transitioning to online teaching, can benefit from it.
“Establishing Online Presence” tutorial is based on the three kinds of online presence as explained by the Critical Inquiry Model: social, cognitive, and teaching presence. These three forms of presence work together to create a collaborative community between the instructor and learners. It is a learner-centered system that respects diverse learning preferences by ensuring that instructors develop and implement a wide variety of instructional strategies to meet a diverse population of students. Keeping these principles in mind, “Establishing Online Presence” will guide language instructors on how to design course activities to model, support, and encourage diverse points of view, various summative and formative assessments for different learning preferences, and student-student and instructor-student interaction to create a safe space in the online classroom.
The tutorial will cover the three kinds of online presence through a scenario-based learning approach: the module will lead language instructors through realistic scenarios to make the most informed decision for establishing online presence in their remote courses. Instructors who complete the tutorial will have access to downloadable reference documents, including a summary of suggested activities and strategies to implement online presence, a checklist for course design to establish presence in the online classroom, and resources and further reading on the Critical Inquiry Model. The tutorial will be available online by Fall 2022.