The Teacher as Leader: Effect of Teaching Behaviors on Class Community and Agreement

This article examines the effects of teaching behaviors in online university classes, focusing on the agreement among class members. Literature on group leaders’ effects on group agreement about workplace climate is reviewed. Hypotheses are generated about the effects that teachers of online courses, as class leaders, have on both the level and agreement about the community of inquiry. They are tested with a sample of 874 students in 126 online courses. The aggregate class level and strength of agreement about the teaching presence have significant effects on the level and agreement about cognitive presence and social presence. Although the aggregate levels and agreement about community of inquiry are related, different patterns emerge. The paper explores the interaction effects of level and agreement, finding that in classes with high levels of teaching presence, the higher the agreement about teaching presence, the higher the agreement about cognitive and social presence especially for classes reporting stronger levels of cognitive and social presence. In classes with lower levels of teaching presence, agreement has a different effect.


Article abstract
This article examines the effects of teaching behaviors in online university classes, focusing on the agreement among class members. Literature on group leaders' effects on group agreement about workplace climate is reviewed. Hypotheses are generated about the effects that teachers of online courses, as class leaders, have on both the level and agreement about the community of inquiry. They are tested with a sample of 874 students in 126 online courses. The aggregate class level and strength of agreement about the teaching presence have significant effects on the level and agreement about cognitive presence and social presence. Although the aggregate levels and agreement about community of inquiry are related, different patterns emerge. The paper explores the interaction effects of level and agreement, finding that in classes with high levels of teaching presence, the higher the agreement about teaching presence, the higher the agreement about cognitive and social presence especially for classes reporting stronger levels of cognitive and social presence. In classes with lower levels of teaching presence, agreement has a different effect.

Introduction
Teachers of online classes lead classes to create a community of inquiry (CoI) wherein participants interact to jointly construct knowledge (Anderson, Rourke, Garrison, & Archer, 2001;Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000, 2010a. One unexplored element in this process is the strength of agreement among students in the class, and the effect that communally held perceptions of teaching presence have on social and cognitive presence; this study addresses that gap, holding that both the levels of teaching, social, and cognitive presence and the extent to which students agree or disagree about these levels are important aspects of the learning environment.

Literature Review
The CoI framework views online classes as socially constructed virtual communities that consist of three major elements: teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence (Garrison et al., 2000;Rourke, Anderson, Garrison, & Archer, 1999). Teaching presence refers to instructors' support for the class and learning through designing course materials and learning activities, guiding discussion, administering the course, and providing feedback (Anderson et al., 2001;Arbaugh, 2007;Garrison & Cleveland-Innes, 2005). Social presence involves the development of emotional connections, trusting relationships, and identification among members of the online class (Richardson & Swan, 2003;Swan & Shih, 2005), while cognitive presence is the extent to which students construct meaning that is transferable to new situations, involving the learning activities of practical inquiry: facing a triggering event, exploring concepts, integrating and evaluating possibilities, and attaining resolution (Kanuka & Garrison, 2004). The teacher's design of the work done in a class, and leadership of students through the learning process, parallel the processes used by group leaders to support both collegial interaction and individual performance in work organizations (Luke, 1997;Pounder, 2008). Both leaders and teachers set and reinforce group climate, set expectations, assess work, and provide support and feedback (Gillespie & Parry, 2009;Shea, Li, Swan, & Pickett, 2005). While there are certainly differences between teaching a class and leading a work group, including the time frame and the significance of rewards, there are many similarities.

Leaders and Agreement Among Group Members
When leaders are more effective in guiding and supporting group members, they can create stronger agreement among the group members in their perceptions of the climate (Bliese & Halverson, 1998;Feinberg, Ostroff, & Burke, 2005). The dispersion or agreement about climate perceptions held by organizational group members have similar effects to the dispersion or agreement among university class members; for example, the effects of the amount and the agreement about satisfaction among members of a class team on absenteeism are similar to the effects of satisfaction with a work group (Dineen, Noe, Shaw, Duffy, & Wiethoff, 2007). Therefore, findings on the Vol 14 | No 5 Dec/13 3 effects of leadership on group agreement and outcomes may be applicable to the effects of teaching on student agreement and outcomes.
The behavior of group leaders affects both the nature and the agreement among group members about the work, and these shared views frame members' understanding of the work environment and predict their actions in many ways (Dragoni, 2005;Feinberg et al., 2005;Schneider & Reichers, 1983). For example the behavior of group leaders strongly affects the group members' shared perceptions of appropriate behavior about safety, which predict accident rates (Zohar & Luria, 2005, 2010. Both the average level and the agreement about group leaders' emphasis on high quality service predict customers' perceptions of the quality of service provided (Schneider, Salvaggio, & Subirats, 2002). The strength of group consensus on leadership and peer relations predicts psychological well-being of group members (Bliese & Halverson, 1998).
Employees who have closer relationships with their leaders, characterized by better communication and more trust, report a more positive work climate, including factors such as the clarity and structuring of work, ability to make decisions, teamwork and intergroup cooperation, and support from management (Ford & Seers, 2006). Such employees also have higher levels of agreement with one another, and more agreement with their leaders' perceptions about the workplace (Kozlowski & Doherty, 1989).
Similarly, instructors lead classes using different approaches, some more transactional and some more transformational (Pounder, 2008 Clearly the optimal course reflects both a high average score and strong agreement; in such a case, a strong community has been developed and the class agrees that it is positive. It must be noted that, because of restriction of range, the level and agreement of group-level variables are likely to be correlated toward the extremes. In order to have an average score of either a five or a one on a five-point scale, there must be complete agreement, while aggregated scores toward the center of a scale may reflect higher or lower degrees of agreement (Cole, Bedeian, Hirschfeld, & Vogel, 2011b;Lindell & Brandt, 2000). Therefore the interaction between the agreement and average level of presence should be considered when examining the community in online courses.
Research on organizational climate has often found such interaction effects (Lindell & Vol 14 | No 5 Dec/13 5 Brandt, 2000), particularly when examining the group level and agreement about the leader's behavior affecting group outcomes (Cole et al., 2011a;Zohar & Luria, 2010).
Agreement about the learning environment in online courses is fundamentally different from levels. Traditionally, research on online courses considers only the level of the learning community -the individual scores that students report on the measures of teaching, social, and cognitive presence. The agreement among class members, or the strength of the community, has not been extensively examined, and is likely to have more complex relationships with various aspects of the learning environment. High agreement does not imply high levels, as class members may agree about low levels of a variable. To understand the nature of the learning community in an online class, both the aggregate levels and the agreement at any given level should be considered.

The Effect of Teaching Presence Levels and Agreement on Community
When teachers design application-oriented learning activities, clearly describe their expectations, guide students through exploring differences of opinion, focus the class and provide helpful feedback, students develop deeper learning and can integrate ideas, solve problems, and apply concepts in the future (Akyol & Garrison, 2011;Bangert, 2008;Shea et al., 2005). This careful design of courses and engaged, student-focused teaching creates more clarity about learning activities, and supports active discourse and critical analysis that create higher levels of cognitive presence. It has already been established that individual perceptions of teaching presence predict individual perceptions of cognitive presence (Garrison, Cleveland-Innes, & Fung, 2010b;Joo, Lim, & Kim, 2011;Shea & Bidjerano, 2009a, 2009b. This study extends this research to the class level, proposing that the aggregate, shared perceptions of teaching presence levels, and agreement about them, create aggregate perceptions of cognitive presence. Student-oriented teaching that involves clear specification of tasks, encouragement, feedback, guidance, and communication is parallel to transformational leadership. In online courses, teaching behaviors include activities such as providing specific assignments, posting regular announcements, actively guiding discussion, and providing public and private feedback. Active teachers probe for deeper understanding, contrast student perceptions to uncover complexities, and guide students to engage with one another to consider alternative perspectives and applications (Bangert, 2008). This will draw students into higher levels of integration and more application of concepts, producing higher levels of cognitive presence for the class as a whole. Most of these behaviors are public, and students share perceptions through comments in online discussions about instructor behavior and course design. Higher levels of teaching presence and greater agreement among class members about the teaching behaviors are likely to lead to higher levels of cognitive presence.
Hypothesis 1: The higher the aggregate level of teaching presence and agreement among students in an online class, the higher the aggregate level of cognitive presence. Teachers can design courses to support student interaction through discussions, group assignments, and other learning activities. They can set requirements for discussion responses or integrate task and social activities, and create areas for informal interactions (Ke, 2010;Rovai, 2007;Swan, 2004). Teachers can also actively facilitate courses to support student interaction by posting comments and questions that encourage students to communicate and by grading students based on their engagement with others (Rovai, 2007;Shea et al., 2005) (Garrison et al., 2010b;Shea & Bidjerano, 2009b), both in terms of designing courses to support discussion (Akyol & Garrison, 2011;Ke, 2010) and directed facilitation and instruction (Joo et al., 2011;Kim, Kwon, & Cho, 2011

Data Collection Procedures and Measures
CoI was measured by the standard validated questionnaire (Arbaugh, 2007;Swan et al., 2008). Participation in the study was voluntary for teachers and for students; response were also included in the study: student gender, age, and the number of previous online courses taken. The number of prior online courses was measured by ten options ranging from "none" to "nine or more." Control variables were aggregated across each class to represent the overall group (Conway & Briner, 2012;Dineen et al., 2007) by calculating the percentage of the class that was female, the average student age, and the average number of prior online courses taken. It should be noted that the average number of online classes may be underestimated, because the actual highest number of online courses taken may be higher than nine.

Data Aggregation
In order to determine whether there is sufficient within-class agreement and betweenclass differentiation to aggregate within classes, there must be evidence that 1) students Class-level variables were created to measure 1) the amount of class-level on teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence; and 2) the strength of class agreement on each of these. The class amount was measured by the mean score on each of the three scales (Cole et al., 2011b). This is referred to as the "aggregate class level" of each presence. The class consensus was measured by the standard deviation (SD) of the scale scores for teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence, multiplied by -1.0. The SD was chosen because it is a fairly robust measure of agreement (Roberson, Sturman, & Simons, 2007), and it is frequently used as an index of attitude dispersion and its converse, agreement, in composition research (Cole et al., 2011a;Dineen et al., 2007;Ford & Seers, 2006;Schneider et al., 2002). Multiplying the SD by -1 simplified interpretation and created an index of agreement rather than dispersion (Bliese & Halverson, 1998;Cole & Bedeian, 2007).

Analyses and Results
The means, SDs, and correlations among all study variables are presented in Table 2.
The mean class level of teaching presence was correlated at .57 (p < .001) with the transformed (negative) SD of teaching presence, measuring agreement.   teaching presence are shown in Figure 1. In addition, one of the control variables, the average number of prior online courses taken, significantly predicted cognitive presence (beta = 0.19, p < .05). Hypothesis 2 held that the higher the aggregate level of teaching presence and agreement among students in an online class, the higher the aggregate level of social presence. It was also tested with regression analysis, with the results presented in Table   3. Hypothesis 2 was partially supported; together the variables significantly predicted  The remaining hypotheses focused on predicting class agreement rather than levels.
Hypothesis 3 held that the higher the aggregate level of teaching presence and agreement among students in an online class at a given level, the higher the agreement about cognitive presence. This was tested with regression analyses that separately considered classes with high versus lower levels of cognitive presence, following Shea and Bidjerano (2009a) because of the different phenomena represented by agreement in classes with high levels as opposed to lower levels. Classes with an average level over 4 on cognitive presence (n = 91) were analyzed separately from classes with an average level between 3 and 4 (n = 35); both results are presented in Table 4. Hypothesis 3 was strongly supported; 23% of the agreement on cognitive presence in classes with strong levels of cognitive presence was predicted by the model (R = 0.53, adjusted R 2 = 0.23, F = 5.59, p < .001), and the effects were even strong in classes with low levels of cognitive presence (R = 0.77, adjusted R 2 = 0.50, F = 6.61, p < .001). The individual effects of teaching presence level and agreement were not as strong but had predicted trends. In classes with strong levels of cognitive presence, the average level of teaching presence had a positive but non-significant effect (beta = 0.26, p = .26).
Agreement about teaching presence had a significant effect on agreement about cognitive presence both for classes with high teaching presence (beta = 0.48, p < .05) and for classes with low teaching presence (beta = 0.26, p < .10).
In classes with low levels of cognitive presence, the level of teaching presence had no effect on agreement about cognitive presence (beta = -0.17, p = .68), while agreement about teaching presence had a very strong effect on agreement about cognitive presence (beta = 0.77, p < .001). In these classes, the average age of the students also had a positive effect on cognitive presence agreement (beta = 0.29, p < .10). The average number of prior online classes taken had a negative effect on cognitive presence agreement, although it was not significant (beta = -0.22, p = .16). The more prior online classes students had taken, the less they agreed about cognitive presence in these classes with lower levels.
Vol 14 | No 5 Dec/13 15 Table 4 Effect of Class Teaching Presence on Agreement About Cognitive Presence *** p < .001; ** p < .01; * p < .05; # p ≤ .10 N = 126 Hypothesis 4 held that the higher the aggregate level of teaching presence and agreement among students in an online class at a given level, the higher the agreement about social presence. Regression analyses were conducted separately on classes with high (n = 67) and lower (n = 59) levels of social presence, again distinguished by mean scores over 4.0; results are presented in Table 5. This hypothesis was partially supported. For classes with higher levels of social presence, more than 15% of the variance in agreement was predicted (R = .48, adjusted R 2 = 0.16, F = 3.03, p < .05). In classes with lower levels of social presence, about 8% of the variance on agreement was predicted, which is marginally significant (R = 0.42, adjusted R 2 = 0.08, F = 1.86, p = .11).

Discussion
This study examined the effect of teachers as leaders in online classes, focusing on their ability to create teaching presence and, through it, a strong and cohesive community of inquiry. It explored aspects of the CoI that are seldom studied: the effect of aggregated class-level perceptions of teaching presence, agreement about that level in the class, and the interaction of both class level and agreement in the online class community. It found that, much as effective leaders create both high levels and consensus among work groups (Bliese & Halverson, 1998;Feinberg et al., 2005), effective teachers also create both high levels and consensus. Further, the average level and within-group agreement about teacher behavior have interactive effects on the class environment and outcomes (Cole et al., 2011a;Cole et al., 2011b;Dineen et al., 2007).
Overall, the average level of class perceptions of teaching presence were related to their agreement, and zero-order correlations indicated that the higher the level of teaching presence the class reported, the higher levels of cognitive presence and social presence the class reported, as well as more agreement about all three. Teaching presence was more closely related to cognitive presence than to social presence, consistent with some previous research (Shea et al., 2005). In addition, correlational analysis found no zero- This supports the effect of both teachers and students on the online experience. For example, social and cognitive presence are affected by students' self-regulation, which Bidjerano (2010, 2012) have referred to as "student presence." Students also differ in their expectations and desires for interaction, and may respond differently to the same teaching behaviors (Swan & Shih, 2005). For some students, active teacher guidance may be welcome and create more focus and deeper connection, while for others students it may be perceived as intrusive and produce resentment. The likelihood Vol 14 | No 5 Dec/13 19 of students' perceiving and responding differently was supported by the strong effects of group demographics that were found on both the level and agreement about social and cognitive presence; average student age and, even more significantly, average experience with online classes increased the classes' social and cognitive presence.
While prior research has examined individual student demographics (e.g., Kim et al., 2011;Shea & Bidjerano, 2009b;Shea, Li, & Pickett, 2006) little research has examined the effect of group demographics; this study supports that notion that the class composition affects the individual's experience.
Overall, it is evident that the causal effects of teaching presence on social and cognitive presence that have been found within individual students also exist at the aggregate or class level, supporting the concept of the teacher as class leader. However, the phenomena in online classes with high levels of learning community are different from those in classes with low levels, and class levels interact with agreement.

Limitations of the Study and Future Research
This study is limited by several factors. First, all data were collected in a single university, although different schools and pedagogical approaches were represented.
However the majority were in an interdisciplinary program with a constructivist pedagogy and standardized courses. Nearly all students were adults, and the average levels of CoI were fairly high. All of these factors may limit the generalizability of the findings.
Future research should consider the effects of both the group level and the group agreement on the outcomes of online learning. For example, it might explore the effects of both class level and agreement on student satisfaction and learning in online classes, to identify the importance of peer agreement on individual student outcomes. Another promising area is the effects of agreement in online classes in different disciplines, extending the research that has found individual-level differences (Arbaugh, 2005;Arbaugh, Bangert, & Cleveland-Innes, 2010).

Conclusions
This study examined the effect of shared group perceptions of teaching on other aspects of the CoI, considering separately the group level and agreement. It found that the previously supported effect of teaching presence on cognitive and social presence, as perceived by individuals, also exists at the aggregate or class level. However, when teachers do little to support learning, agreement is associated with negative effects on the learning community. Class composition, in terms of student age and experience with online learning, affects both social and cognitive engagement. The independent effect of class agreement on outcomes supports the notion that peers' perceptions, and in