The Online Teaching Persona: Develop and Deliver Your Persona

Overview and Objective:

Effective online teaching involves the following: social interaction, ongoing feedback, consistent online teaching presence, online cognitive engagement with students, and emotional presence within the online class. At times these core elements are ignored; nevertheless, they play a critical part in course quality. To ensure that the above mentioned elements are addressed, the instructors will need to develop their online teaching persona. The purpose of this section will be to: (1) define the concept of online ‘teaching persona’; (2) identify scalable best practices and effective strategies that will allow for the establishment of the instructor’s online social presence, emotional presence, teaching presence, and cognitive presence; and (3) provide you with a toolkit for developing your own online teaching persona.

Defining the Online Persona

Carrol ( 2002) defines the online persona as the professional “self” put forth when you deal with (teach) students, personal style, and in class presence. Parini (2005) suggests the online persona is a mask that one speaks through. Clark (2012) also states, "Online personas are the social identities that people create for themselves in online communities and on websites" (para. 1). Clark further suggests that the images we present on web pages and in blog posts, tweets, comments, discussion forums, and emails help to establish a person’s online persona.

Intertwined with the online persona is the instructor's critical beliefs (Showalter, 2003). Giving consideration to your online persona will lead to increased motivation, more effective teaching , improved cognitive engagement, enhanced managerial roles, and enhanced public personality (Lang, 2007).

The cumulative roles of the online teaching faculty (cognitive, affective and managerial roles) become one's online teaching persona, public teaching personality, and teaching style (Coppola, Hiltz, & Rotter, 2002).

Scalable Best Practices and Effective Strategies

• In this video, James Brown in the UCF Theatre Department, introduces his course and enlightens his students on the upcoming curriculum in his Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll Links to an external site. course (3:30 min).
• Professor Coronado, teaching in Communications, has a bit of an edge here. Her background was in television where she anchored and reported from the field. She incorporated clips of her prior work to help introduce her persona in her Announcing and Performance Links to an external site. course introduction (2:24 min).
• Professor Warren Waren, in his Sociology of Popular Music Links to an external site. course, used this animated video to introduce the concept of Sociology in Music, again, in his own voice. Note the use of the music and the allegiance to copyright and Fair Use standards. Note his ownership in the closing few seconds. (3:00 min).
• Dr. Michelle Randall has some fun dealing with her course, Beginning Interdisciplinary Studies Links to an external site.. She introduces her fast-paced persona and helps her new students learn as a part of the “cornerstone Interdisciplinary Studies course."

Persona Toolkit

The following are all online tools that may be used to develop and deliver your online teaching persona:

• Welcome e-mail
• Instructor introduction and photograph
• Discussion/brief bio/welcome
• Chat – Office hours, discussions
• Module intro or content videos
• Lecture PPT with audio or podcasts
• Video capture
• Daily/weekly announcements/Follow-up on prior assignment or assessment

Optional Activity

Let’s study this for the next few minutes.

• Are you are on Linkedin or in an online community where you might share your online persona?
• How many of you are teaching online and have put any thought into this subject or tried to intentionally build your online persona?
• Is your online teaching persona identical to your personal persona? Should the two be separated?
• Do you currently use any of the online tools mentioned in the “Persona Toolkit?”
  How do you (or will you) integrate technology to facilitate your online teaching persona?

Now pull it all together - your online teaching persona, teaching philosophy, and the tools, teaching methods and strategies you will be using in your online course. The following exercise(s) will ask you to synthesize and define your earlier work to begin building your course. These questions will help to clarify your online teaching role(s) and responsibilities to ensure a successful online course. They will assist you as you begin to design, develop, and deliver your online course.

Determine how you might apply your current teaching philosophy and persona in your online course. Use the Online Teaching Persona Worksheet Download Online Teaching Persona Worksheet

to map an outline of your plan.

Additional Recommended Resources

This brief video details 8 Lessons Learned from Teaching Online Links to an external site.. Joanna Dunlap, Assistant Director for Teaching Effectiveness, University of Colorado-Denver and Patrick Lowenthal, Instructional Designer, Boise State University, teamed up to produce this for Educause.

References

Online Teaching Persona Reference sheet Download Online Teaching Persona Reference sheet

Carroll, C. (2002, April 15). Getting good teaching evaluations without stand-up comedy. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/jobs/2002/04/2002041501c.htm Links to an external site.

Clark, C. (2012). Your online persons as a faculty member. Retrieved from https://ltlatnd.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/faculty-member-online-person/ Links to an external site.

Coppola, N. W., Hiltz, S. R., & Rotter, N. G. (2004). Building trust in virtual teams. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 47(2), 95-104. 

Lang, J. M. (2007). Crafting a teaching persona. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 53(23), p. C2.

Parini, J. (2005). The art of teaching. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Picciano, A. (2002). Beyond student perceptions: Issues of interaction, presence, and performance in an online course. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 6(1), 21-40.

Richardson, J. C., & Swan, K. (2003). Examining social presence in online courses in relation to students' perceived learning and satisfaction. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 7(1), 68-88.

Rovai, A. P., & Barnum, K. T. (2003). On-Line course effectiveness: An analysis of student interactions and perceptions of learning. Journal of Distance Learning, 18(1), 57-73.

Showalter, E. (2003). Teaching literature. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

 

TOPKit Sample Course was prepared by the University of Central Florida (UCF). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License Links to an external site..