The Skillful Teacher

Being Responsive
Instructional responsiveness is central to the creation of an effec-
tive online learning environment. Such responsiveness is evident
when instructors seek out student concerns, share those concerns
publicly with students, and take action to address them. Examples
of such action are building on students’ comments to reorganize the
course for ease of navigation or addressing what students say in
online discussions. These actions underscore that student issues are
heard, taken seriously, and acted upon. Responsiveness is probably
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the most important factor contributing to the success of a discussion-
based, online class.
It is important to acknowledge, however, that it is neither pos-
sible nor desirable to give students feedback every time they con-
tribute to an online class. First, there are not enough hours in the
day to make this work. Second, such an obsessive level of respon-
siveness only causes students to become more dependent upon the
instructor’s comments and approval. However, my experience sup-
ports Fein and Logan’s (2003) observation that “from the very
beginning of the course, the instructor should foster a high-quality
feedback environment by establishing an expectation around the
importance of instructor-student and student-student feedback”
(p. 53). The reason for this is simple. Learning online can be a
lonely, unrewarding experience. It can also breed uncertainty and
loss of confidence. When instructors are relatively absent from dis-
cussion, students begin to wonder: Why aren’t I hearing more from
the teacher? What is she doing as I slog my way through these learn-
ing modules? What does she think about the quality of my work?
Why should I be taking so much time to express my ideas when she
takes so little time to acknowledge them?
The number one complaint from online learners is the low level
of instructor responsiveness. Students clearly need to hear from us on
a regular basis. For those students who tend to be less engaged, or at
least less participatory, it is particularly important to receive frequent
responses from the instructor, often in the form of simple acknowl-
edgments or requests for further information. One advocate of online
discussion (Bender, 2003) urges teachers to be up-front about their
likely level of participation. She writes, “Making explicit the fre-
quency of your participation in class helps students to anticipate when
they will be hearing from you, and also will not give false impressions
that just because the class is available 24/7, that you are, too” (p. 57).
One theme stressed in the literature concerning the importance
of responsiveness to online teaching is the “social presence” of the
instructor, defined by Gunawardena (1995) as the extent to which
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someone “is perceived as a ‘real person’ in mediated conversation”
(p. 151). Gunawardena and Zittle (1997) argue that social presence
has two major components, intimacy and immediacy. Intimacy is
the sense the learner enjoys that the instructor is responding in an
individualized way to her efforts and has an awareness of her as a
person. Immediacy refers to the speed of instructor feedback. Both
elements help bridge the physical and psychological distance that
exists between instructor and students in online environments. The
evidence is fairly strong, according to Gunawardena and Zittle
(1997), that “social presence is a strong predictor of satisfaction” in
computer-mediated conferencing environments (p. 23). Drawing
on the research of others, Aragon (2003) claims “that social pres-
ence facilitates the building of trust and self-disclosure within an
online learning context” (p. 61) and urges instructors to enhance
their social presence by remaining actively involved in the discus-
sions taking place on discussion boards, providing frequent oppor-
tunities for students to respond to instructor comments, giving
timely feedback (responding to all student e-mails within a day),
striking up conversations with students who arrive early for live
chats, and including their own personal experiences in responses
they post to students’ stories.