Designing Presence Together: A CoI-Guided Summit and Accountability Approach

Authors

• Latisha D. Haag, Fort Hays State UniversityFollow
• Rachel Dolechek, Fort Hays State UniversityFollow
• Janet Stramel, Fort Hays StateFollow
• Jessica Heronemus-Claiborn, Fort Hays State UniversityFollow

Strategy Description

This strategy, developed as part of a Digital Teaching Champions initiative at a regional comprehensive university, describes an Engage & Elevate summit and accountability model that helps faculty implement small, presence‑focused changes in their online courses using the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework. In two synchronous Zoom summits, faculty cohorts completed a brief CoI self‑assessment, explored discipline‑neutral examples of social, cognitive, and teaching presence, and analyzed low‑, moderate‑, and high‑presence versions of common online activities. Guided by summit worksheets and templates, each instructor selected one existing activity (such as a discussion, peer review, or feedback workflow), identified one “small teaching” move for their own courses, and implemented that change over several weeks. A follow‑up accountability session invited participants to share what they tried, how it went, and what they learned, using their experiences and student feedback to refine future iterations. This summit‑plus‑accountability structure centers manageable, evidence‑informed experimentation. It can be adapted in other institutional contexts to support ongoing improvement in online and blended teaching.

Because the strategy centers on one, small concrete change supported by reusable worksheets and examples, individual instructors can also adapt it on their own. Even without a formal summit, they can select a single activity in any online, blended, or face‑to‑face course and apply the same CoI‑aligned process to help students feel more connected, think more deeply, and experience clearer instructor guidance while keeping the workload manageable.

About the Author

All four authors are professors at Fort Hays State University. When a call from the university was sent for Digital Teaching Champions to develop a means for faculty to improve their online teaching and course design, they applied. Latisha Haag is an Instructor of Communication Studies, Rachel Dolechek is an Associate Professor of Business Communication, Janet Stramel is a Professor of Teacher Education and the Edna Shutts Williams Endowed Chair for the College of Education, and Jessica Heronemus-Claiborn is a Lecturer of Accounting.

Date Created

2026

Pedagogical Category

Course Content

Rights

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Haag, Latisha D.; Dolechek, Rachel; Stramel, Janet; and Heronemus-Claiborn, Jessica, "Designing Presence Together: A CoI-Guided Summit and Accountability Approach" (2026). Teaching Online Pedagogical Repository. 35.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/topr/35