ABSTRACT
How different would an online learning experience be if a student had the option to see and hear his professor each week? This is a question that Santa Barbara Community College (SBCC) set out to explore in 2010. Douglas Hersh, Dean of Educational Programs and Technology at SBCC, coordinated a study that examined how the integration of a professor’s “human presence” into the design of a course would affect online attrition rates. The premise is simple-two groups of students were studied, one group logged into Moodle and was presented with a course that the professor taught using text-based announcements and messaging. The second group of students engaged the same curriculum but were regularly greeted with an embedded 3-5 minute video of their professor at the start of each new learning module and a direct link to Skype for connecting with their instructor in a live voice or video office hour chat.
