Establishing teacher presence and teaching presence
Teacher presence, which is how you speak and relate to your students, must not be confused with teaching presence, which is the way a course is structured, activities are designed and feedback is given. While discussing how I create teaching presence in my f2f class, I came across some interesting resources that describe what teaching presence is and how to create effective teaching presence in the f2f classroom as well as the online classroom. I found, in my experiences as a student, that the most effective sense of teaching presence comes from the type of feedback I receive on my activities. In my f2f classroom, I have always been aware of the way I present feedback to students, trying to make sure they learn from the activities they do and what specifically they can do to improve their work. Especially in a music theory class, giving simple right or wrong answers is not enough, but there needs to be explanations to back it up so the next time a composition comes up, students know how to use the concepts we learn to analyze, compose and listen to music.
I am interested in developing ways to incorporate effective feedback – in both the course I’m developing and in my f2f music theory class. I find that the use of audio feedback in this course is very helpful and effective for me as a student. It grabs student attention more and to be able to hear positive comments would be a great sense of motivation for my online students. One of the resources I came across identified audio feedback to be associated retention of content and students associate it with the perception that the instructor cared more about them. Not only will the use of audio be helpful to learning the content, but will also serve as a way to build a positive class community. Plus, considering the way I present myself in the use of audio feedback in the online course will create a greater sense of awareness of how I deliver feedback in the f2f classroom.
I found a resource that specifically discusses feedback –oral, written, and aural – and how each can be specifically used in the music classroom. In addition to students listening to feedback from the instructor or reading written comments, sometimes it is necessary for them to perform along with the instructor to diagnose problems or to determine how to improve skills.
