HOW TO MAKE DISTANCE EDUCATION PROCESS EFFECTIVE?

 

    There should be some variables in distance education that would make the lessons successful. First of these variables is social presence. It is the feeling of togetherness and should be created by being percieved as a real person rather than sitting on a screen passively. To create the sense of togetherness some warm-up exercises can be done that would initiate students to interact. Preparing a quiz, ask students about their feelings, etc can be done as warm-up activities.

      The second type of variable is transactional presence. It is about sharing information which is created by the student. Creating and sharing the information with others will encourage and attract the students' attention to the lesson.

    The third variable is cognitive presence. It is constructing the knowledge by giving feedbacks to the student and motivate them for critical thinking. Thus, student will be able to follow the lesson, concentrate on it and participate actively.

    The last variable is teaching presence. This includes the teacher's designing and creating a content for the lesson, facilitating and directing cognitive and social processes by creating materials, responsing to the students and giving the information without doing cognitive load.

    When all of these four variables come together, new skills, new information and new perspective is gained, these make up educational experience. When some of these variables are missing in the education, the lesson will not help learning, it will become boring unfortunately. So as teachers or as  candidates of teachers, we should be aware of these variables to make our classes enjoyable and effective.