Enabling Instructor Presence for Non-Designer Instructors: Using Page-Level Course Design to Improve Student Satisfaction and Success

This study examines whether instructor presence can be built into a pre-designed, asynchronous online course so that non-designer instructors (NDIs) with limited autonomy and training can benefit from its known impact on student satisfaction and success. The authors redesign the pages of a first-year writing course to maximize instructor presence and then run the updated version alongside the existing version. Grade data and student survey results indicate that the redesign successfully improved student perception of instructor presence, rapport with instructors, student satisfaction, and student mastery of learning outcomes.