Past, Present, Future: Why Presence Matter

Dr. Kevin Hurley is a GOA Faculty member who has an Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a concentration in Online Learning earned through American College of Education. Dr. Hurley's dissertation focus was on students' connections and engagement in the online learning classroom over the pre and post pandemic period.

Back in the spring of 2020, as schools shifted to online learning, I felt more prepared than ever to take on this unprecedented challenge. At that time, I had been working for GOA for 5 years, along with my in-person teaching, and I was quite comfortable with online learning. When the school I was teaching at in person decided to suddenly shift online, a meeting was held by the IT department and the tech coaches, about 6 people altogether, plus me, the lone teacher and the only one with online teaching experience. As we scrambled to figure out what came next, I remember thinking that the years ahead would be unprecedented for the world of online learning. 

Fast forward a few months to the summer of 2020, and I embarked on a 5-year-long journey with the American College of Education to study those unprecedented changes and to write a dissertation. The exact wording changed a bit over those 5 years as the world went from mostly online, to hybrid, to what some could call back to normal in-person learning. But was it all back to normal? No, as I was to find out.

Finally, I landed on the exact topic, a focus on connection and engagement among online students from 2019-2024. With the help of colleagues at GOA, I attempted to figure out what happened and where we are now. The foundational theories I built my thesis on were focused on “presence”, or how we show up and create connection in our course spaces, and on engagement as stimulated by self-determination.

Results from my research showed that student connections and engagement online have waned in the post-pandemic years compared to pre-pandemic years. This decline is due to several factors, most notably fewer opportunities to interact and connect genuinely, burnout with online interactions stemming from pandemic learning practices, and fewer genuine interactions because of AI replacing human-generated messages. While burnout from the pandemic is probably self-explanatory (you may even feel it still!), the other two deserve some further discussion.

Why would there be fewer opportunities to interact and connect genuinely? The short answer is that schools, whether online or in person, have been more streamlined in their curriculum compared to pre-pandemic years. This is good as educational institutions have figured out what seems to work and made curriculum and practice standards that everyone follows, providing equity in experience to students. However, it also takes away some of the spontaneity of interactions. Students need genuine interaction to connect with their peers and their teacher, and in the online space, this is doubly important as spontaneous interactions in the downtime of class or hallways of in-person schooling do not occur. If they don’t get that interaction, they don’t connect, and if they don’t connect, engagement levels tend to dip.

Probably the most interesting thing to come from this study was the change in genuine interactions due to AI. As this tool has become more and more a part of our daily lives, students have begun to use it not only for more legitimate reasons, like grammar help or as a tool to bounce ideas off of, but as a tool to represent and sometimes wholly replicate themselves. Think of it like this. If your assignment is to put a discussion post in the online forum and then later respond to two peers, what happens if you use AI to complete those tasks? Well, maybe you miss out on some interaction, and perhaps your teacher even notices and confronts you about it. But that is not the most detrimental thing. As more and more students use AI for social interactions, whether part of a class or in less formal settings, their perception of a real person on the other end of that interaction also decreases. In other words, how connected would you feel to your peers if you think that, like you, they are all using AI to write responses to you?

If you feel like the sky is falling, take a deep breath! Some positive findings and future practices did emerge in the data. Presence in a course, more specifically what is called “teacher presence” is intentional planning by a teacher for interactions to occur. This is very important in the online space, but something we can have control of before classes even begin. Thinking of and implementing intentional interactions that contain spontaneity and genuine connection is possible. Some examples include meaningful and timely feedback in audio or video/screencast form, engaging video content, check-ins, student meetings, and open office hours. Interactions between students, what is called “social presence” are also important and something we can plan for in the online course. For example, the use of chat apps like Pronto, thoughtful engagement in asynchronous discussions, and involvement in synchronous group calls can improve feelings of connection between students.

While AI was seen as an obstacle to connections in the current environment, it is important to look to the future for ways in which we can work with and harness the power of AI. AI is an excellent sounding board for ideas, to handle mundane but needed tasks, and to ask specific questions to (but you should always double-check). The important thing though, is to put your true self into the course and, as a teacher, to consider where and how students can also put their true selves into their interactions. Assignments that ask for what could be bullet points are out, more nuanced and personalized assignments are in. How can you personalize an assignment so it can’t simply be answered by an AI prompt? Ask AI! But seriously, crafting interactions to pull in a student’s true self will boost their connection to the course, to you the teacher, and to the content. 

For more, see:

• What Does Readiness Look Like in a World of Shifting Problems and Possibilities?
• The Magic of Movement
• Use It or Lose It: Making Feedback Work for Students

This post is part of our Shifts in Practice series, which features educator voices from GOA’s network and seeks to share practical strategies that create shifts in educator practice. Are you an educator interested in submitting an article for potential publication on our Insights blog? If so, please read Contribute Your Voice to Share Shifts in Practice and follow the directions. We look forward to featuring your voice, insights, and ideas.

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