The Community of Inquiry framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) provides a broad picture of what online teachers and instructional designers can do to build an effective online learning environment for students. Social, Cognitive, and Teaching presences are the three overlapping components that work together to contribute to the learning community. Even guided by the general framework, it is still challenging to build and implement effective online teaching simply because there is a lot to consider within each presence. We still need to consider the small details, which altogether will lead to better online teaching.
One piece of details here: "The Need for Balanced Feedback". The suggestions offered by the author focused more on the teaching presence. Lots of discussions have been made on authentic assessment and adoption of rubrics, however, fewer attentions have been made on how to offer feedback to students. Obviously, it is easy to mention errors and offer criticisms in students' homework, but it is also important to show your care to students by offering balanced feedback. When providing feedback to students, it is good to consider the balance - positive commending comments vs. criticisms, as well as brief notes vs. detailed description of errors.
