Developing Digital Presence for the Online Learning Environment: A Focus on Digital AVC

The Growing Need For A Different Kind Of Teacher

In the more traditional education classroom setting, teachers have from the time the bell signals the beginning of the class until the time that bell rings again to release students to complete their learning objectives. Within each class period, teachers should teach, scaffold instruction, differentiate, interact, model, encourage, re-teach, and explain the assigned homework set for the next class within a given class period. However, distance learning, or the education of students who are not physically present at school by using online/virtual work assignments, is on the rise. In the 2017-2018 school year, about 21% of public schools in the 2017-2018 school year offered some or all courses entirely online while 30% of all charter schools had online course options. (“Distance Learning”, n.d.). Online teachers need to complete all the same tasks as those in traditional teaching roles and be able to manage this with a distance learning setting.

While there are many similarities between the traditional and online classroom settings, they also have unique challenges. Despite the growing popularity of distance learning opportunities, Christopher Pappas of eLearning Industry shares a list of barriers that online learners struggle with. Among the list, he notes that many online learners often face boredom. Finding ways to successfully teach to all different types of learners within the confines of an online course is challenging. Learners who are not getting all their needs met in their online courses can easily find themselves disengaged and uninterested in the materials. Furthermore, it is difficult for online learners to be self-motivated and often uncertain of how to be successful in an online environment. (Pappas, 2016). Online students in primary and secondary grades can still find success in online classes if they have teachers with a working knowledge of how to differentiate instruction to fit the online models.

So, then, how do teachers evolve to meet the needs of today’s 21 Century learners and make their (partial or fully) virtual classes both relevant and engaging? Some schools allow for a hybrid teaching model where there is instruction completed both in person and online so that students can experience both learning models. However, the online classroom still needs to be managed in a way that supports student learning and growth. The key to this task is for the teacher to immerse themselves in the class and develop a digital presence within that online learning environment. By creating an accessible, personalized, consistent experience for students, and by modeling these behaviors for students, an online classroom can be just as engaging and successful as the more traditional face-to-face classrooms.

Online educators need to be able to utilize the technology available to them to intentionally create an online presence that is both appealing and inviting to students so that students are more interested in interacting with their online class and learning materials​. Educators can create an online presence that makes students feel connected, valued, and interested in engaging in the classroom material; this can be done through a more intentional focus on their own digital accessibility, digital voice, and digital consistency (otherwise known in this chapter as a teacher’s Digital AVC).