Abstract:

This paper examines and reports the ways of promoting teacher presence in foreign language online learning environments, especially in a Finnish national project called KiVAKO. By teacher presence, I mean all the tools, resources and possibilities that teachers have in their repertoire during the online courses. That is how they, both synchronously and asynchronously, deliver teaching and give feedback, instructions, guidance or are present in any other ways to their students. Teacher presence might be easier in a traditional classroom-teaching context. Modern online learning environments create new challenges for teacher presence in many ways.

The KiVAKO project (Strengthening Linguistic Capital in Finnish Higher Education) is a national, government-funded project (from 2018 to 2021), which aims to create new multi-media online materials and a new e-learning and blended curriculum for the teaching and guidance of foreign languages. The project focuses on implementing flexible ways of study for less studied foreign languages.

There is a lot of research evidence that demonstrates the importance of teacher presence in online learning environments for example to maintain the students´ motivation, to prevent the feeling of isolation and to reduce the number of dropouts (see e.g. Bowers & Kumar, 2015). We have found out that effective online guidance in language learning requires three main points: giving time, attention and respect to the learners (see e.g. Tammelin, Peltonen & Puranen, 2011). The effective teacher presence includes also the guidance for interaction during the online learning process, effective use of peer reviewing and utilizing the feedback.

Important parts of today´s online learning environments are the modern learning analytics tools. The aim of the learning analytics is to utilize the information stored in the learning environment of the students as users of it and by this way to develop both online learning and teaching experience.

The aim of my research is to get information and answers to three main points. Firstly, in what ways foreign language teachers are present during the online courses. Secondly, what e-tools they use to increase their online presence, give feedback and instructions to learners. Thirdly, I try to find out how they utilize the modern learning analytics during the online courses. I have chosen the qualitative research method to obtain more information based on teachers own views and experiences and to gather the answers I have used an online questionnaire.

References:
[1] Bowers, J. & Kumar, P. (2015) Students' Perceptions of Teaching and Social Presence: A Comparative Analysis of Face-to-Face and Online Learning Environments in International Journal of Web-Based Learning and Teaching-Technologies. IGI Global.
[2] Tammelin, M. Peltonen, B. & Puranen, P. (2011) Guiding the E-learner in Foreign Language and communication Course in WorldCall – International Perspectives on Computer-Assisted Language Learning. Routledge. New York.

Keywords:

Online learning, guidance, teacher presence, learning analytics.