>> You've tuned in to HubTalk, a podcast about teaching, learning, and technology.

[ Music ]

>> Okay. Welcome back to this episode of HubTalk. I'm Colin Stapp.

>> I'm Bill Hamlin.

>> And today, we're diving into the topic of instructor presence in online courses.

>> So much of the work around instructor presence and facilitation of online courses here at Chemeketa started back in 2014. The faculty senate created a work group for online facilitation standards, and that group was charged with the research and development for a set of voluntary guidelines that outlined best practices in the facilitation of online courses. The recommended practices that the work group developed were organized around Chickering and Gamson's 7 Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. Those guidelines then became the foundation for the Quality Online Instruction Course Review Initiative that started back in 2017.

>> Research also shows that instructor presence has an influence on student engagement and retention in online courses. So, today we want to talk about strategies that you can use in your online courses to increase instructor presence. So, with us today we have Patrick Lowenthal who is an associate professor and the co-coordinator of the Doctor of Ed Program in the Educational Technology Department at Boise State University. Patrick's research interests focus on instructional communication and how people communicate using emerging technologies with a specific focus on issues of presence, identity, and community online. He also writes about issues and problems of practice related to post-secondary education, which sometimes is also related to instructional communication. And on a personal note, Patrick was one of my professors in my Master's program at Boise State as well. So, welcome, Patrick. It's great to have you today. Thanks for joining us.

>> Glad to be here.

>> What are some of the things that you're working on currently around instructor presence or anything like that?

>> I'm collecting some feedback on, well doing a study on video feedback. So, I'm interested not just how video feedback helps build instructor presence but actually student-to-student. Students giving each other video feedback. We also have a team of researchers at the university who are working on better understanding community and presence and interaction in our doctoral program that we have. And then, I'm doing some work with Flipgrid. So, using Flipgrid and trying to see what students think about it.

>> That's cool. Okay. Well, we have some questions for you. We're going to jump right in, have a dialogue, and look forward to just chatting.

>> Yeah, Patrick. We spent a little time going through some of your past research and work. And one of the papers that I personally really enjoyed reading was The Power of Presence. And some of these questions are around some of the ideas and concepts in that paper. But when we talk about social presence, I often kind of use the terms instructor presence, social presence, interchangeably, but when we think about social presence, can you kind of give us a definition of that and why it's important for student engagement and retention? Specifically, in online classes.

>> Definitely. So, because I researched this, sometimes I geek out. And I get a little geeky. And so, when I'm working with faculty, I always try to walk that line between being too much of the researcher and just talking the way you would with any faculty about teaching and learning. But social presence came up during the 1970s because a group in London were really interested in how telecommunications at the time influences the way people communicate. And this line of research, their communication studies, has kind of taken off and gone lots of different ways. But for me, I think in the way that I define social presence, it's how one person when interacting with another person, establishes him or herself as being real and being there. And so, for me social presence is really about those two things. It's not about community, though it's a building block for community. It's more than interaction. And so, I always like to just clarify, for me it's about how do I establish myself as being a real person? Being there. Both in a supportive sense but also in a real sense of being there as a person. And then, while it started with this idea of kind of one-to-one communication, now when we think about our online courses, it's this kind of many-to-many interaction. So, it's really making sure that students get a sense of who each other are. That they're real. That they're there. And, as well as the instructor.

>> A lot of that kind of strikes a chord with me. As a student, I took a lot of online classes, specifically in grad school. And it was often the case where it was kind of just this autopilot situation where I could submit an assignment and get a grade back, but I never really knew the instructor at all. I never really knew my classmates. It was all just kind of this, I don't know. I'd log on, I'd do some work, and I'd log off. It didn't feel real.

>> And that's what I loved about the program at Boise State, is it did feel real.

>> That's great.

>> All of my instructors, they knew who I was. I knew who they were. There was that sense of community as best that you could have with students around the world.

>> Sure.

>> But there was that interaction where it never felt like a course was on autopilot.

>> Yeah. Well, I could definitely see myself getting more into this. But Patrick, what kind of motivated you to start this research and really focus on social presence?

>> I started teaching online in the early 2000s and I started teaching online with dial up. And it was a different time. And I remember when I started teaching online, I was really scared. I was scared I didn't know how I was going interact. There were things that I think I do really well face-to-face. My energy, my passion, I just didn't know how I'd do it. And so, I was really interested or concerned about how I would connect with students. How I would establish myself as a real person. Get a sense of who they are as students. And so, for me it really wasn't about student learning. It wasn't about the students. I was just really concerned with how I was going to teach online. And so, it was kind of selfish. And it's grown over time. But at the time, it was really just all about me, me, me. And I think that a lot of times when faculty are new to teaching online, they're scared. And they're scared because they don't know how they're going to do the things that they do face-to-face. And so, I was really interested in this idea. And what I should have mentioned even earlier is social presence has now become popularized as being a component in the Community of Inquiry framework. And the Community of Inquiry framework is this argument that a meaningful educational experience consists of three presences. Social presence. Teaching presence. And cognitive presence. And so, while we're talking about social presence, a lot of times for a long time, people were really thinking about student-to-student. How do students get a sense that they're real? That they're there? But I've also believed, and you had mentioned earlier in your question about retention and other things, I think the instructor has a really important role in the class. Even if it's learner-centered, it doesn't have to be teacher-centered, but it's still that instructor, that teacher plays a real critical role in helping students persist. Helping them be successful. And so, even though I joke that, and I was serious that I got into this research because I was worried about myself, I still think it's really natural and important for all instructors to really help students get to know who they are. And in turn, they should also try to take that extra step and get to know students. And then get students kind of interacting with each other.

>> So, the three different types of presence that you mentioned. Would you consider teaching presence to be synonymous with the facilitation? Course facilitation?

>> That's a great question. I actually usually clarify. I don't always in my earlier work, but nowadays I'll clarify. I'll differentiate between social presence and instructor social presence and teaching presence. So, in the Community of Inquiry, they called it teaching presence rather than teacher presence. Because they believed that anyone can do that teaching. So, they believe in a learner-centered community where students can be taking on those different roles. And so, with the Community of Inquiry, teaching presence is really seen as involving direct instruction, facilitation, and instructional design. And so, it's kind of those teacher roles that a teacher plays. Whereas, I see instructor social presence as how can you get to know me as a person? And get to know that I'm real? And so, part of that is, I am a person who is the teacher. And I'm interested in the subject matter. I have an expertise in this. But it's also getting to know me. Maybe what my interests are. Do I have kids? Do I not? Or just other aspects. And so, I like to differentiate teaching presence from instructor social presence or instructor presence. But for me and the Community of Inquiry, definitely teaching presence, one of the key things is that facilitation. Facilitating that Community of Inquiry. Helping students interact. Helping to make sure everything goes well.

>> Okay. That's great. Because in our, we mentioned earlier our Quality Online Instruction Initiative. So, that's our own internal course review system built on the framework around QM. But then, we started adding in instructor presence and what we call facilitation. And that was the work based on what the faculty senate had charged that work group with. So, that's really interesting.

>> Yeah.

>> How it all ties together.

>> And Patrick, I. Sorry, Colin. I have another question about those three areas of presence. Do you see those things either overlapping a lot or meshing together in different ways? I would imagine they're not three different things that are always separate. What do you think about that?

>> Definitely. Garrison and his colleagues who created the Community of Inquiry framework in the late '90s, they definitely see it as an integrative model where they even, where the research is nowadays is people don't like to talk about just researching social presence without taking into consideration the other three, or all three presences. People now even separate it out into learning presence to emotional presence. So, it's gotten really complicated. But to really get at your point, I think, is that they don't happen in isolation. The idea is that teaching presence, you think of that facilitation, that instructional design. Those are things you do that can in turn help influence social presence and cognitive presence. And it's one of those things that, the chick and the egg. What happens first? But I think it definitely helps to see them as really interacting together. Some people even like to map over the idea of the three types of interaction when people talk about student-to-student interaction, or student-to-teacher interaction, or student-to-content interaction. You can almost see those mapping over those three types of presences as well.

>> Oh, yeah.

>> That's a great way to think of it. Okay. That's cool. In your paper, The Power of Presence, you mention several strategies for increasing instructor presence. And some of these I'm familiar with, with the classes that I took from you. But could you share some of the methods that you use in your online courses? And which ones have you found to be most beneficial to students?

>> So, The Power of Presence is actually a book chapter reporting on the study that Joni Dunlap and I did. We actually recently published the full research article on that study. Whereas, the power of presence is trying to be more of an accessible way of talking about the strategies themselves. But where that came out is, Joni and I. Joni was my dissertation advisor, but during my program of study at the University of Colorado Denver, we were trying all these different ways to establish social presence. And develop it. And maintain it in our courses. And so, we had all these different things. We started in 2008, 2009 using Twitter. We had all these different strategies. And over time, we really started wondering, well, which ones would we get the most bang for our buck, if you will. And so, the list of strategies that we talk about, some are ones that I use. Some are ones that she uses. Some we overlap and we both have used them throughout time. But one of the things that kind of brought that about is at the time, we found that, while Twitter helped kind of capture some of this kind of hallway talk and it had a lot of affordances and things we liked about it, Twitter was also really hard to do and to get other faculty to use in the courses. And so, we really wanted to find out, well, is this really a good use of our time? Or could some of these other strategies actually be more effective? And so, we did the study and we definitely found that students, I think over three or four semesters we collected data, reported that some were more important than others. And so, Twitter still was overall rated highly. But out of all the strategies we used, it was the lowest rated one. And so, some of the things that students rated the highest were detailed feedback, whether it was audio and video feedback or just detailed feedback. Another they rated highly was a successful group project. And so, successful being the key word there. But another one was digital storytelling. So, over time, Joni and I continued to experiment in different ways. I mentioned at the beginning that I've been using Flipgrid lately. But, definitely over time what I do in my classes has changed. And so. But a few of the constants that I do is, I try to always give video feedback to at least one assignment if not two in a course. I also try to always do what I call live synchronous meetings. And so, I call them Happy Hours. I've written a paper about this, but it's kind of like a live virtual office hour in something like Zoom. I do anywhere from three to four of those a semester. And those are something I continue to do to this day. I also do a lot of having students peer review and work in small groups. And so, I don't go crazy where like every week is a group project. But I try to always, with every class I have, have some type of opportunity for peer review and to have some type of opportunity for at least one group assignment.

>> That's great. Actually, the Happy Hour. I have borrowed that terminology for my First Year Experience class. So, I do this similar type thing that you do. I do it three times during the year and call it Happy Hour and use it as my virtual office hours. We've even used that type of strategy for some of our term-long professional development.

>> Yeah.

>> Workshops.

>> Yeah. For sure.

>> So, talking about the video feedback. We're curious. Was there a lot of time involved when you first started? And how has your efficiency increased with providing that? You mentioned that you did it for one or two assignments. So, obviously you're not doing it for a class of 30 students every assignment. How do you kind of break that down? Is it bigger stakes assignments?

>> Sure, well, the way it actually. I started doing this about 2007, 2008. And I was an adjunct and so I was a [inaudible] student. I had a full-time job. And at that time, I actually was doing it on almost every assignment. And so, I was teaching and really where it started was, I was teaching a web development course. Or a course on kind of how to create instructional websites, that type of course. And I would find that there are certain assignments like a web page or like a Power Point that are really hard to just give text feedback. It's not like you can, like a Word document, where you can insert a comment and easily have inline feedback. And so, I found that at the time it was just easier for me to hit record and just start talking for a couple minutes. At the time I used Jing. Jing is a TechSmith product that they're kind of retiring because of Flash no longer being used or supported across browsers. But what I liked about Jing at the time, a lot, is that it restricted you to 5 minutes. And so, I couldn't go on and on. And so, I'd be able to hit record, and I would give video feedback. And then, at the time, I would also go and post that video feedback in the course for others to see it. I made sure I never talked about grades so it wasn't a FERPA violation. But I just gave feedback. But I wanted students to be able to see the feedback I gave other students. If you're teaching a course like this face-to-face, you might walk around and give feedback in front of other students. When you see each other's work or students might come up in front of the room and show what they're working on and everyone gives feedback. So, I was trying to simulate that type of environment. Well, over time, though, I found that it was just really intense to do that for every assignment. I also found that students weren't really looking at each other's feedback. So, I stopped posting that in the course. There were a few that did. But the amount of work to be able to upload the video, post it in the discussion forum and post it in the gradebook. It just was really intense. And as an adjunct, I only had so much time. But, just similar to like Happy Hour where I do that a few times a semester, I didn't want to go to an extreme that just said, well, let's just get rid of this. Because I found that students often would report in my evaluations that video feedback was key to what they loved about the course. Often, at that time, especially back then, people thought that it was like magic. That I was giving them video feedback. They were like, I can't believe you're doing this for each of us. And for me, it really began with me trying to save time. But also, I wanted to be able to show them things. And so, there's been variations where people will do audio feedback rather than video. But I've found that, over the years, I still find that, like you said, some big assignment or not just a big assignment. If there's something like a rough draft of something that they can then later take my feedback and build on, it's critical and very valuable for me to give video feedback. And so, I try to pick something about halfway to two-thirds into the semester that builds on something else. Every course is a little different. But I try to then give video feedback. I no longer use Jing. I use Camtasia now. And I upload it to my Google drive. I still have problems with Camtasia because it will let me just, I can record an hour long if I wanted to. And every now and the students who are struggling, I've uploaded video feedback that's 45 minutes. And so, I don't recommend that. But it's. Sometimes some students need a little more. But you know. Long story short, I still do video feedback. I've gotten much better at it over time. I try to pick one assignment where I give everyone video feedback. But some students might actually get video feedback on a few assignments if they're struggling and they need more work. I try to be intentional about when and what assignment. I don't. I've found that if I give video feedback on the last assignment once grades are due, students often won't watch those videos. So, there's a fine line between doing this. And I think that some assignments or some courses, it might work better than others. But it could even be something on writing. Or it can be something on a Power Point. It can be a web page. It can be any type of artifact that you can look at the screen and kind of talk through. That can be really helpful. You know, something that always needs to be taken into consideration is there are also accessibility issues. So, you know, if you have a student with a disability, I don't caption every one of my video feedbacks. But if I had a student with a disability in my classroom, I would. But that's just the way that I deal with it. Where some institutions, you're not allowed to use video at all if you don't transcribe or caption every video. So, these are all things that people need to consider. If I'm working with a new faculty member, video feedback is something, it's a little more advanced. It's not something with a new online teacher. But if someone's doing something over time and they have a rough draft or they have a project that builds on, I often encourage them to kind of give it a go and just see. It might even just be on a need-by-need, case-by-case basis for students. Other things that I've done before when I've had classes with 25, 35 students is I might. Sometimes I've had classes where I can give video feedback on one assignment for half the class and the next week on another assignment on the other half. So, I don't always feel like it has to be on the same assignment. Also, when I'm teaching multiple courses, I try to make sure I'm not giving video feedback on all of my courses during the same week. To save myself some time.

>> Yeah, those are some great strategies. And I hadn't really considered, toward the end of the term or the semester, students might not be as invested in watching it. Which kind of gets me thinking, though, about maybe doing it in some of my courses around mid-terms. As a way to not only provide feedback on an assignment, but just to check in with the student. Use it as a check in as well. Patrick I was sharing, before we started, I was sharing with Bill about the course that I took with you was that Designing Instructional Websites. And that you had provided feedback. Because I think it was, when we got into CSS is kind of when I struggled a little bit. And I emailed you to ask some questions. And then, you turned around and provided some feedback answering my question, and it was like, the lightbulb went on. It was like high school math. When I finally learned how to do algebra. It was like, wow! CSS made sense once I was able to see what you were clicking and doing and showing me in the class. So, I could see, depending on the content, how providing video feedback would be way more useful to a student than just typing out text.

>> Yeah.

>> Well, and specifically, and this is where it kind of depends on the class, but in that class, I have instructional videos, but the videos are generic and they're something that I'm doing where they're something different when it's your assignment. I can take it down. And I can look at the code and you can see me kind of like walk through it and maybe show how you might tweak it. So, I'm giving you individual feedback on your project, that you can then benefit from. And so, for me when I think about video feedback, I really think about, there are kind of two ways that I do it. One is the standard where I pick a project and I want to give feedback on it. But, there's another way where it's more impromptu where a student has a problem with something. And that's where they will post their code. I'll download it. Show how to fix the problem. And then sometimes I'll post that back in the course so other students can see it, so they can benefit from kind of fixing this problem type of thing. And so, but the flip side where I'm going now, what I started earlier to say, I'm doing more research on this is because I think that students. If video feedback is powerful for me to give to students, how useful could it be for student-to-student? Students struggle sometimes giving feedback to each other. But, you know, sometimes in the past when I want students to peer review or give feedback, you give them a rubric and they just kind of fill out a couple of things and it's really not that helpful feedback. And so, I'm really trying to experiment ways to get students kind of giving each other video feedback. But one of the reasons we can kind of do this nowadays is that technology has come further. There's a lot of free screen casting tools. And students especially, I do teach graduate students but, they're a lot more comfortable experimenting with things, where I think 10 years ago it was a different time. But nowadays, you can push students a little. They can do amazing things.

>> So, I am going to be interested to read about some of your research that you find on the student-to-student video interaction. I think that has a lot of benefit for students. Especially if they're working in small groups or things like that. And kind of building on, like you were talking about, that social presence in the class and how they all kind of map and overlay the student-to-student interaction.

>> And one thing, too, I want to, you know, you talked about the power of seeing with video feedback. But the other thing that comes up with video feedback is you can hear, kind of, empathy and emotion in my voice. And so, rather than just things being marked up all in red, you can basically hear me saying this is what you're doing really well. So, it's often the kind of sandwich technique, right? Where you start off with something good. You then get in kind of the critical part, and then you kind of end positive. But when I'm talking through it, it can come across as much more humane, caring, than when it's just a sentence or two that maybe I'm in a hurry. It's right to the point. And where video feedback, you can really kind of feel that empathy and concern.

>> Yeah, for sure. And that's exactly how it was in the class with you, is you were able to look at my code, point out what I was doing well, and then it was almost like I think I see where you're going. This is where you got off track. And you were able to kind of break down that code for me, which totally made sense. So, you're right, it does. It gives that human, again builds that human aspect that you're not just some bot typing out a reply to the assignment. But you know you're seeing where the students are and where they're struggling, maybe. Or where they're doing well. And you can highlight those aspects.

>> Yeah. So, Patrick, with regard to the video feedback and the classes you've taught, and Colin, the class you took with Patrick, it seems like the video feedback is really, really good for certain types of classes. Perhaps some types of classes more than others. Web development. Computer science programming. That kind of thing would be awesome uses for it. But thinking about, maybe some other strategies and techniques for increasing social presence in online classes, do you find that there are some strategies that work better for some courses than others? Perhaps different content or academic areas?

>> A lot of these, I think, are really versatile. And so, in The Power of Presence, you know, we talk about different things from group work to peer review to student-to-student interaction in discussions. Whether small group, big group. You know, a lot of these strategies work in most classes. But there's no question that, for instance, at Boise State, we have a few big high-enrollment online courses. They have like 200 students in them. And so, you know, when a course gets that big, one, you as the teacher aren't giving video feedback to everyone. But, it's even hard to have full class discussions and so, you know, the type of assignment or the type of course might really dictate. I also like to think that some courses are discussion-heavy. Some courses are a little more discussion-light. And so, maybe a philosophy or an ethics course or something like that might be a real discussion-heavy course. Where it's you're digging into stuff. Where a course, for instance, on web development. There are discussions for sure. You want to have that substantive interaction. But, it's not a discussion-heavy course the same way that you're discussing reading as much as you're working on projects. And so, when I think about social presence, it's really about how do I get students interacting with each other? So, interaction for me, is the building block of social presence. And so, you want students interacting with each other and with you as the instructor. And so, how can you get students interacting? You know, group work is one way. Group work can be problematic, too. And so, but small groups are one way, but when you think about whether it's art history or whether it's foreign language class, any of these. You think about what would you do in the face-to-face classroom. How would you get students interacting with each other? How would you interact with them? And then, think how would I do this with a fully online class? One of the things that I find with social presence is that people often see it as just something you do like with an icebreaker the first week of class. And then they forget about it. And so, I like to think about that you want to establish social presence. You then want to continue to develop it throughout the semester, because you want, hopefully, that course to kind of turn into a learning community. I'm one that I don't believe that just a group of students equates magically a learning community. It takes effort. And in some classes, we find that development easier than others. But the building blocks are interaction, developing social presence, then getting students to collaborate, and, hopefully you develop that rich learning community. But it really depends on the course. And it also depends on the teaching style of the instructor. Some are really good with facilitating discussions and they like discussions. They like to jump in the discussions and interact with students. Others might want to, you know, really like to do short video lectures. But then find ways to get students in groups and to build on that. You know, some classes you could have students interact and have them create something. So, it could be you're having them, you know, work on a Wikipedia page. It could be that they're co-writing a paper. You know, working on a blog. I mean, there's lots of ways. But the idea is, how do you intentionally design opportunities for students to interact with each other and the content and the teacher. And then, what are ways that you can help facilitate that interaction so that those social things start to develop? With all that being said, though, I also am a strong believer that I think sometimes we favor the extrovert. We favor a certain type of learner. And I think we also need to have flexibility where, I think sometimes we can go too far with virtual hugs. And trying to get people to build social presence where some students don't need it as much as others. While I think we all benefit from it, I think that we have to balance the needs of the individual and the many. And so, sometimes you have to just feel it out. And some semesters I have a group that's more social and I can build on some things. Sometimes I have to change gears a little. And so, I try to get to know my students. Try help them get to know each other. And then I also try to sometimes build in fun things throughout the semester. Whether it might be something about sharing music or a news thing or something that gets them, kind of, sharing a part of themselves. But once again, to the point that they're comfortable doing so.

>> Do you find it ever necessary, I guess, or you know. You're teaching a class, and you know maybe halfway through, things just aren't clicking the way you want. Maybe not necessarily, you know, their performance in the class. But it just, things aren't gelling the way you want. Do you ever find it necessary to just kind of throw something in there to try to inspire some more connection? Some more personal community building that isn't necessarily related to the course content?

>> Definitely. Every group is a little different. You know, there are. Sometimes I definitely have to switch gears a little. But I also try not to go overboard with rehauling a class in the middle of a semester. Because I recognize, too, that every group is a little different. And sometimes, you know, you live to fight another day and you learn from it and improve the class the next semester. But there are definitely times where, you know, maybe things aren't, the discussions aren't as active. So, there are opportunities where, one, you can, in the gradebook. You can give feedback in the gradebook or directly to students if you're finding this group isn't performing or discussing the way you want. There are other ways. Like you can have a cyber cafe or something where you start threading some discussion like, what did you guys think of the Game of Thrones' ending? Anyone like it? Or, there are things in sports going on. Or women's World Cup soccer is about to start. Exciting! So, there are ways that you can kind of start trying to bring some things in there. I also usually try once a semester to send an individual email to students. Just to check in and see how things are going. But if things aren't going right, whether maybe it's just a few students or the whole class, I might post an announcement or contact the student or groups of students or entire class directly and talk about it. And it's a little easier. I always remind myself that I do teach graduate students. I also teach educators. So, there is some flexibility where my daughter is 20 years old. You know, there are things that you could try to get her rah-rah excited about. It's just not going to happen. And so, you know, I think that people have to know their students, know where they are in the semester. But there are definitely times where I try to jazz things up. It's just like in a face-to-face class. Sometimes the semester's not going well. Sometimes it's that night where you're just like, ugh. This is a dud. We have to do something different. It's a little harder with online because things, especially the way I design courses, they're kind of really intentionally designed. And so, I try not to throw new assignments on them. I also generally don't get rid of assignments. But I know I've seen people do that before. Where, you know, in a face-to-face course, you'd get rid of one paper and be like, alright. We need to get, you know, lighten the load here to focus on quality rather than quantity. And so, there are different ways that an instructor might do that in an online course, too. But often, it's just through, you know, being honest. Using your communication tools to reach out. So, it just depends on the course, depends on if it's one student, a group of students. Maybe it's even you. I've had times where there was an illness in my family. I found out my mom had cancer. And so, that semester was just rough. And there was no turning it around for me. I was kind of in survival mode to just get through it. And so, you know, I think that it just depends. It's complicated. I don't know if that's a good answer.

>> No, I think it does. Because, I remember now what I was going to say. There is no, what you just mentioned. Just by having a group of students online doesn't mean that it's magically now a community and that everyone's going to interact. So, it's just the same thing. There is no probably prescribed formula of how things are going to work and you kind of have to, you know, see what works like you said. And make adjustments as you go.

>> Yeah, and it helps me to hear you say that it's okay to have a bad week, even a bad term. I mean.

>> Yeah.

>> Because, I try to, in my classes, I have, like it has to be perfect. It has to run smoothe. And just now, I realized I forgot to turn on this week in my online class. So, I'll be doing that as soon as we're done here. But knowing that it's okay to have those hiccups and things is good. It humanizes everything. And I think that's part of what we're talking about here anyway.

>> Yeah.

>> Making things more human.

>> And with those hiccups, what I try do to, and this goes back to everyone's personality and who they are. When I make mistakes, I try to even be really honest and forthright about it. Oops! You know, and explain what I did and what went wrong. Where I know that some people don't like to admit that they've made a mistake and so, it's about personality. Kind of deciding how you want to deal with those situations. But to me, so much of it comes down to interpersonal communication. It's how would you deal with this in a face-to-face course? The fact that we're maybe doing this online and don't have any face-to-face time doesn't change the fact that the same principles kind of apply. You know, you want to reach out. Check in. See how people are doing. You want to sometimes try to, you know, be honest and empathetic. I mean, all of these kind of communication skills that we do face-to-face, we can do them online. They just sometimes look a little different. And so, but I do think we need to cut ourselves some slack. I think sometimes we expect online, because we can pre-design it, that it's supposed to be perfect. Right? And orchestrated and everything just go right. And it's just not always that way. It's often not that way.

>> Yeah. We've been talking with Patrick Lowenthal about instructor presence. Be sure to tune in for the second part of this interview in the next episode.

>> HubTalk is produced by the Center for Academic Innovation at Chemeketa Community College. Visit our website, facultyhub.chemeketa.edu to find helpful resources about teaching, learning, and technology integration. Along with video tutorials and more podcasts episodes just like this one.