The Problem of Teaching Presence in Transactional Theories of Distance Education

This article explores the challenges online teachers face in establishing a teaching persona. While many online teachers believe that they create and control their teaching presence, drawing on transactional distance theory and relational distance theory, this paper argues that such an assumption can result in increased distance between teacher and students. This increased distance makes it more difficult for online students to accurately sense who their teacher is. Problematically, this sense of who the teacher is can be a powerful element to help online students succeed within the course. To help students to perceive, more clearly, who the teacher of the course is, the article recommends frequent and varied communication between teacher and students, the utilization of multimodal communication methods to provide differing opportunities for students to make meaning, for teachers to share who they are with students, and to proactively encourage the formation of relationships between course participants through course design.