Building Cognitive Presence Online : EHE Academic Technology

August 27, 2020,

To improve cognitive presence in a course, students should construct and confirm meaning through ongoing dialogue and reflection (Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 1999). Below we offer ideas for building cognitive presence in your course.

Strategy	Facilitation	Resources
Discussion Boards	Allow students to select from three options when they post: relate the week’s material to their own life explore and explain the linkages between what they’ve already learned in the course thus far and the week’s new material link course material to the wider culture as portrayed in the media, including classic media, fictional series and movies, and current events	Building and Sustaining Class Community – Discussion Boards
Listening and Responding	Model attentive listening and responding by sharing the following sentence stems: I am hearing you say X; is this what you mean? I’m not sure I understand, could you tell me more about that? This sounds or reminds me of X; was that your intention?	“Mindfulness and Radical Listening in Digital Spaces” by Bob Cole and Sarah Lohnes Watulak
Collaborative note-taking	Use one or more collaborative note-taking frameworks, including: Blank notes Fill-in-the-blanks Question-focused	Scaffolding and Frameworks for Collaborative Note-taking
Reflection	Ask students to create a reflection journal in Microsoft OneDrive and share it with you.	Self-reflection Assignment by Susan Blum Building and Sustaining Class Community – At the Class’ End

Additional Resources

“Want to Reach All of Your Students? Here’s How to Make Your Teaching More Inclusive” by Viji Sathy and Kelly A. Hogan
The Inclusive Learning Design Handbook
Create effective discussion boards
Assign a semester reflection
Design authentic assessments