It’s Complicated: Instructors’ Perception of their Teaching Roles Online

Abstract

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many institutions had shifted to primarily online teaching during the 2020- 21 academic year. This case study at Brescia University College (London, Canada) investigates the experiences of faculty members who, for the most part, had never taught online prior to March 2020. It explores faculty members’ conceptualization of their instructional role when teaching online. Instructors described the role of online teacher as creator and deliverer of content, curriculum designer, assessor, and facilitator of community. The findings confirm Community of Inquiry teaching and social presences but did not find mention of cognitive presence. We also found support for instructor and learner presence. Our findings suggest that the Community of Inquiry framework evolves over time from the pre-active to interactive to post-active phases of teaching.

Keywords

• community of inquiry
• instructor roles
• online teaching
• qualitative
• covid-19