“Are you there?”: Teaching presence and interaction in large online literature classes

Increasing interaction in large online classes is a challenge that many teachers are facing in the post-pandemic era. This study, rooted in Garrison et al.’s CoI (Community of Inquiry) framework, employs both quantitative and qualitative methods to explore what a teacher can do in large online literature classes to promote interaction by way of enhancing teaching presence. The correlation and regression analysis of the questionnaire survey indicates that the teacher’s strategies lead to high levels of teaching, social and cognitive presence, and in turn facilitate students’ online interaction, resulting in their strong sense of satisfaction. Besides, it suggests teaching presence has stronger relationship with cognitive presence than social presence. In addition, social and cognitive presences are strong predictors for learning outcomes which account for 68% of the explained variance in this study. Students’ online interaction in the form of postings show that they are more cognitively engaged rather than socially involved, which implies that students are more focused on the construction of knowledge rather than try to be connected in the community. The limited peer interaction in spite of students’ acknowledgement that peer interaction plays a unique role in pushing them towards better understanding of the texts poses the teacher another challenge for enhancing social presence.