INSTRUCTORS’ FEEDBACK AS TEACHING PRESENCE AT DISTANCE LEARNING

Abstract

The relationship and interaction between instructor and student are at the heart of the teaching and learning process. In distance learning, that relationship and interaction can exist in the form of online feedback from instructors in students’ assignments or discussion forums. The purpose of this study was to analyze the existence of teaching presence through tutors’ feedback in discussions and assignments in online tutorial at the Faculty of Law, Social and Political Sciences in Universitas Terbuka, Indonesia. The concept of teaching presence in this study was part of the Community of Inquiry framework from Garrison, Anderson & Archer (2000). The interaction in this learning community was combined in three elements, namely social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence. The Community of Inquiry was defined as a cohesive and interactive community of learners whose purpose was to critically analyze, construct, and confirm worthwhile knowledge (Garrison & Vaughan, 2008). Meanwhile, teaching presence in the Community and Inquiry framework was defined as the design, facilitation, and direction of (student) cognitive and social processes for the purpose of realizing personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile learning outcomes. The roles of a tutor in teaching presence in this framework were as: (1) instructional designers and organizers; (2) direct instructor, and (3) facilitators. This study used content analysis to analyze the sample text of feedback that were provided by tutors in discussions and assignments activities of 5 (five) courses during the eight-week period of online tutorials. The analysis of the text used message unit to identify to what extend teaching presence occurred in the interaction between students and tutors. The findings of this study indicated that teaching presence appeared in the 5 (five) courses through tutors’ feedback. It showed that the tutors’ feedback was functioned as facilitating discourse, where instructors have a primary role in promoting productive discourse by focusing class discussions, raising pertinent questions, finding areas of consensus, and moderating student participation.