Teaching Presence in Online Course for Part-time Undergraduates

Sine qua non to quality learning, teaching presence is viewed as a promising mechanism for orchestrating learning experience accommodating the needs of part-time students. Inspired by this view, this study explored teaching presence of an English teacher in an online learning environment populated by undergraduates pursuing their education on part-time basis via distance education. A validated end-of-course online survey to assess teaching presence in the online course complemented with teacher reflections on the areas of instructional design and organisation, discourse facilitation and direct instruction were employed. Based on this study, this paper presents ways adopted to establish high teaching presence, challenges faced in meeting students' needs, and students' positive evaluation of teaching presence. (C) 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the LSP 2012 Committee, Language Academy, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.