Instructor presence in online teaching: challenges and opportunities

The coronavirus pandemic has affected higher education on a global scale. During the first days of the COVID-19 pandemic, university professors experienced deficiencies to convert their current full-time disciplines into a remote format ensuring learning outcomes. Technology-based communication, which was prevalent in online education during the COVID-19 pandemic, exacerbated the issues associated with social presence. Social presence represents a crucial component of interactions that take place between instructors and students online remotely. This study reviews the social presence, with a focus on the research regarding the online teaching practices that demonstrate their effectiveness and relevance before and during COVID-19. The article begins by exploring the concept of social presence, distinguishing its correlations and interdependencies with other related concepts (empathy, student emotional, cognitive and behavioral engagement, learning outcomes, and motivation). The article offers a review of separate findings that investigate the teaching practices ensuring instructor presence and establishing stable contacts with learners. The data analysis reveals the main features vital for feelings of social presence from the online instructor. They include connectedness as the state of having timely communication with students, instructor responsiveness as the quality of having a quick or positive reaction from the instructor, online learning techniques, ensuring community building and empathy facilitation. Finally, the paper discusses the implications of social presence and the recommendations are given through three engagement strategies: management, connectedness and choice