Instructor Presence in a Multimodal Course

Multimodal courses—courses that combine synchronous and asynchronous elements—offer many possibilities for instructor presence. Sometimes, however, more possibilities mean more confusion about what is best for your specific course. What does it mean to be a good instructor or facilitator? What kinds of things might an instructor do synchronously and asynchronously to showcase their personality and expertise?

This piece contains strategies for leveraging instructor presence to create space for authentic interactions and encourage diverse learners to participate in your course. It breaks down two different types of interaction related to instructor presence and ends with tips for building instructor presence in both synchronous and asynchronous modalities.

In online or primarily online courses, creating instructor presence is critical to student success and satisfaction (Lowenthal, 2016; Oyarzun et al., 2018) and impacts students' perceptions of a course as inclusive (Shane-Simpson et al., 2024). Instructor presence, most simply, is the feeling that the instructor is a real person who is engaged in facilitating student learning in a course. Richardson et al. (2016) describe it as “the specific actions and behaviors taken by the instructor that projects him- or herself as a real person" (p. 99). Much of the work of building instructor presence in a course centers on building instructor-student presence— that is, attending to the relationship between an instructor and any individual student.

Some ways to facilitate instructor presence are passive—an instructor can set them up once and not have to engage with them again. Using a profile picture and bio in your learning management system (LMS) allows students to click on your name and see details about your experience and personality. Students can get a sense of you via your previous expertise or personal interests immediately upon entering the course.

Other methods of instructor-student connection are more active. In online spaces, students report that communication and responsiveness hold priority when it comes to instructor presence in a course while engaging in specific synchronous communications is less important (Sheridan & Kelly, 2010). However, finding the right balance of communication within a course can be delicate—Larson et al. (2019) term this “the Goldilocks Paradox.” You might address this by finding ways to be visibly active in the course without taking over the conversations your students are having. For example, contribute to a discussion by inviting further discussion of a point or writing a final summary response after student submissions are in. Perhaps most importantly, giving consistent, personalized feedback can help further build a persona in an asynchronous space, and students report such feedback as a key priority in their course experiences.

Building presence synchronously presents different opportunities and challenges. Synchronous time is great for connecting with students, but, by its nature, is more limited than asynchronous time. For this reason, you might consider doing most of your content delivery in the asynchronous space and focusing synchronous meetings on relationship-building and collaboration. This can help leave time for activities to build presence synchronously, such as incorporating opportunities for students to make informal or spur-of-the-moment connections with you before, during, or after your synchronous sessions. Such opportunities allow students to ask questions they might not think are significant enough to warrant an email. Keep in mind that, depending on how many credit hours your course is worth, it may have student workload requirements. Having students read an article on a topic as opposed to, say, sitting through a lecture on that topic can conserve time for synchronous activities. Ultimately, however, the student’s total time commitment (reading the article and participating in the synchronous activity) should fall within the workload boundaries that are reasonable for the course.

Moving some content to asynchronous time doesn’t mean that you have to eschew content delivery during synchronous sessions entirely. A short lecture can be an effective way to reveal aspects of your personality and expertise. When lecturing synchronously, consider focusing on experience-based content—the stories only you can tell—as opposed to content that can be delivered just as well via a reading or video. Synchronous time helps to build interpersonal connections, so, where possible, choose stories and topics that foster those connections. You might opt to focus on anecdotes “from the field,” important things you’ve learned in your career, or narratives that benefit from back-and-forth interaction with students—for example, the story of an academic or business challenge, paused periodically for students to attempt to solve the problem at hand with the information presented so far.

Another option for building instructor presence in either space is working through a problem or question set that students have attempted. This can be an effective use of synchronous time, but keep in mind that students also benefit from video tutorials, which they can play and then replay as they work through a problem or revisit a difficult concept (Chen et al., 2018).

Intentionally chunking your synchronous time can be an effective way to balance multiple learning goals. Consider using part of a synchronous session for a short lecture and part for an engaging activity that allows students to connect. Alternatively, if you are using a synchronous session for an activity or project work, consider breaking up the session with mini-lectures that guide or refocus student work.

Besides cultivating their own presence, one of the key tasks of an instructor is to facilitate student-student interaction. A study by Stillman-Webb et al. (2023) compared the experiences of students in online and hybrid courses based on the commonly used Community of Inquiry model, which teases out the three different kinds of interaction in an online course: student-content, student-instructor, and student-student. Stillman-Webb et al.’s findings took on an additional kind of interaction, instructor-student-student interaction, which describes an instructor’s role in facilitating interactions between learners. Students rated other kinds of student-instructor presence similarly in both kinds of courses, but instructor-student-student presence differed between online and hybrid spaces—students felt faculty had more control over their peer interactions in a hybrid course than they did in an asynchronous online space.

When developing and facilitating a multimodal course, then, it's important to think through your goals for student-student interaction (Stillman-Webb et al., 2023). When evaluating opportunities for student-student interactions in your course, ask yourself the following questions:

• Do students in this course benefit from the networks they’ll build here? Placing people in a video meeting or online course space doesn’t necessarily translate into meaningful connections. Hall and Villareal (2015) highlight a revealing response from a graduate student in a hybrid course: “If you’re a name on a discussion board [a classmate is] not going to say, ‘Hey, there’s a job at my school!’” (p. 74). When possible, incorporate opportunities in both modalities for students to get to know each other and build personal and professional bonds, such as collaborating on assignments, brainstorming in preparation for individual work, or offering discussion topics that invite students to bring in their professional skills and experience.
• Will group assignments prepare students for roles in a research team or work group? If teaching students to collaborate is one of your course goals, consider assigning group roles or incorporating opportunities (reflection assignments, etc.) for students to give feedback about their group’s dynamics. Teaching students how to work together is especially important if professionals in your field work in groups, and active facilitation can help make group work successful. As you do so, keep modality in mind: synchronous collaboration tends to foster better convergent tasks, such as working together on one product, while asynchronous collaboration may lend itself better to divergent tasks, like debating multiple perspectives on an issue (Rezaei, 2017).
• Will knowing about each other help students understand how different learners approach a topic? A course on gerontology, for example, might be taken by a hospital social worker, a family therapist, and a disability advocate, and each of them will interpret and use the material differently. If your students span a range of careers or backgrounds, you might have them reflect in an introductory discussion about their educational trajectories and goals. Or, to foster understanding of multiple approaches to a topic, provide guidelines for discussions that encourage actively thinking about viewpoints. For example, suggest that responses to other students include a question from the point of view of a potential investor, a critic of their methodology, or a curious novice to the topic at hand.

For both kinds of presence, take opportunities to link asynchronous and synchronous sessions. For example, hold synchronous reflection discussions based on comments in asynchronous discussion boards, or use asynchronous discussions to continue the thread of a synchronous conversation. Attention to building these links will help the course as a whole and your presence as an instructor feel consistent and cohesive.

1. If lecturing, focus on a story only you can tell, and consider linking it with an activity or including a call for responses.
2. Walk students through your process of solving a problem or reading a document.
3. Incorporate opportunities for students to make informal or spur-of-the-moment connections with you before, during, or after your synchronous sessions.
4. Actively facilitate conversations and project work, managing expectations about student workload and giving clear guidelines about deliverables.
5. Tailor group work or discussion toward your course goals for student-student interaction.

1. Use a profile picture and bio in your online space.
2. Give timely and tailored feedback on student work.
3. Include opportunities for students to connect and collaborate in the online space and instructions that give clear and useful guidelines for how to do so.
4. Consider ways to participate in the course that leave a footprint without overwhelming students’ attempts to converse with one another.
5. Link asynchronous and synchronous sessions.

Chen, B., Bastedo, K., & Howard, W. (2018). Exploring design elements for online STEM courses: Active learning, engagement & assessment design. Online Learning, 22(2), 59–75.

Hall, S., & Villareal, D. (2015). The hybrid advantage: Graduate student perspectives of hybrid education courses. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 27(1), 69–80.

Larson, E., Aroz, J., & Nordin, E. (2019). The Goldilocks paradox: The need for instructor presence but not too much in an online discussion forum. Journal of Instructional Research, 8(2), 22–33.

Lowenthal, P. R. (2016). A mixed methods examination of instructor social presence in accelerated online courses. In L. Kyei-Blankson, J. Blankson, E. Ntuli, & C. Agyeman (Eds.), Handbook of research on strategic management of interaction, presence, and participation in online courses (pp. 147–159). IGI Global.

Oyarzun, B., Barreto, D., & Conklin, S. (2018). Instructor social presence effects on learner social presence, achievement, and satisfaction. TechTrends, 62(6), 625–634.

Rezaei, A. (2017). Features of successful group work in online and physical courses. Journal of Effective Teaching, 17(3), 5–22.

Richardson, J. C., Besser, E., Koehler, A., Lim, J., & Strait, M. (2016). Instructors’ perceptions of instructor presence in online learning environments. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 17(4), 82–104.

Shane-Simpson, C., Obeid, R., & Prescher, M. (2024). Multimedia characteristics, student relationships, and teaching behaviors predict perceptions of an inclusive classroom across course delivery format. Teaching of Psychology, 51(3), 298–308.

Sheridan, K., & Kelly, M. A. (2010). The indicators of instructor presence that are important to students in online courses. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 6(4), 767–779.

Stillman-Webb, N., Hilliard, L., Stewart, M. K., & Cunningham, J. M. (2023). Facilitating student discourse: Online and hybrid writing students’ perceptions of teaching presence. Computers and Composition, 67, 102761.