Four Types of Presences in Education

 The Framework presented by Garrison and Shin basically talks about the variables/ presences that should exist in distance education to teach & learn as effectively as possible. So what are these presences? Let's look at below and continue:

1- Social Presence: Social Presence supports the idea that the feeling of togetherness in distance education should be created. As students have online lessons for a long while because of the pandemic, they haven't seen each other. This may result in lack of motivation and eagerness. Instead of anonymous names or just photos behind the boring screen, teachers can create an environment as if they were in class together. For example, it's possible to motivate students and have them actively participate in the class with warm-ups at the very beginning of the lesson. This will create not only a sense of being together but also turn the lesson into a catchy activity.

2- Transactional Presence: Transactional Presence evolves when students start to give information to their peers. For example, the teacher wants his/her students to create a task and talk about how did they do that. Students can talk about the content of the lesson like a teacher does, they can share information with others and they can explain things that they've achieved/created. Thanks to it, students are not passively sitting and watch the lesson flow anymore but have more active roles in creating & sharing the information they've learned so far. 

3- Cognitive Presence: Cognitive Presence reflects the ability to think critically, solve problems as collaboratively and construct the meaning between teacher and students. It is based on the interactive relationship between personal understanding and shared dialogue. It offers students to activate their cognitive skills such as thinking, brainstorming, discussing etc. Students explore the information, link them with the ones they learned previously and they are ready for the experience of education.

4- Teaching Presence: Teaching Presence explains what a teacher needs to do to create an effective educational environment through online lessons. For example, as a first step, he/she creates content for lesson and design it by taking students' interests into consideration. Then he/she prepares materials, gives information about small topics and answer the questions of students. Each lesson, the teacher introduces new types of experiences and activities to students without too much cognitive load. There might be additional materials such as videos to watch together. It facilitates the distance education using technology without being slow or boring.