Recent research in effective teaching have turned to the field of online teaching and learning which greatly depend on technology made available through the web. To some, effective teaching can be attributed to the instructor's ability to establish teaching presence. Since the emergence of Communities of Inquiry (COI) framework espoused by Anderson, Rourke, Garrison and Archer (2001), teaching presence has been the accepted term in distance education to mean “the design, facilitation and direction of cognitive and social processes for the purpose of realizing personally and educationally worthwhile outcomes”. With the rise of online synchronous learning platforms which challenge asynchronous modes of teaching there is a need to reexamine the construct of teaching presence and concretely see how this happens in virtual platforms such as WizIQ. WizIQ Virtual Classroom offers an online synchronous learning environment with features such as video, audio, interactive whiteboard, powerpoint, mediaplayer, polling, screenshare and text-based chat to connect teachers and learners real-time. Since 2007, narrated presentations of courses and classes have been documented within WizIQ and its evolving community of practice to include work of exemplary teachers through which teaching presence can be examined. This qualitative study aims to describe the nature of teaching presence of three exemplary teachers at WiziQ. Using content and conversation analysis of recorded synchronous classes, this study intends to examine online interactions which make for teaching presence. Results of this study points to a new perspective of looking at teaching presence as socially constructed in the context of arising outcomes and themes which uniquely surface from virtual classes. Findings of the study build on the prior work of researchers seeking a better understanding of teaching presence to inform effective teaching in online synchronous learning environments.
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