Presence+Experience: A Framework for the Purposeful Design of Presence in Online Courses

In this article, we share a framework for the purposeful design of presence in online courses. Instead of developing something new, we looked at two models that have helped us with previous instructional design projects, providing us with some assurance that the design decisions we were making were fundamentally sound. As we began to work with the two models we noted that they could be overlaid to create a useful design framework for our efforts. The framework-what we refer to as the Presence+Experience (P+E) framework-merges the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model with Kolb's experiential learning cycle. We used this framework to guide the redesign of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) method courses for eLearning delivery.