Facilitating student discourse: Online and hybrid writing students’ perceptions of teaching presence

Abstract

This study examines whether delivery format affects the degree to which students perceive teaching presence in their online and hybrid first-year writing (FYW) courses. In the Community of Inquiry (CoI) theoretical framework, teaching presence plays a role in creating a learning community through instructional design, discourse facilitation, and direct instruction. To measure the extent to which students perceived these elements of teaching presence, the Community of Inquiry in Writing Studies survey was administered to 669 students in online and hybrid sections of FYW at four universities.

Online and hybrid students demonstrated similar perceptions of teaching presence through individualized feedback and the instructor-student relationship, but they differed in their perceptions of group activities and the instructor-student-student relationship. Of the three categories of teaching presence, discourse facilitation was the one about which online and hybrid student perspectives were most disparate: it had the highest mean ranking of the three teaching presence categories by hybrid students but the lowest mean ranking by online students. These findings can inform instructors’ approaches to the numerous modalities now available post pandemic, including their efforts to facilitate student discourse that will support a learning community.