Critical Review: The Effect of Synchronous Instructor Presence on Student Learning

In this session, we will discuss the outcome of a critical review of the literature on the effects of synchronous instructor presence on student learning, in the post-secondary online learning environment. Specifically, we were interested in empirical studies on courses with activities that included a structured instructional presence as an integral part of the course design, published from 2010 to 2022. Findings from this critical review highlight the current state of the existing literature, especially a lack of a clear description of the research methods and data analyses. We invite the QM community to future collaboration and research initiatives on empirical studies on the effects of instructor presence in online learning.