classroom communication

E-learning is a special rhetorical environment that requires teachers to use communicational skills and strategies that take advantage of its possibilities and compensate for the limitations of the virtual classroom in the interest of educational effectiveness and their ability to persuade. This study is the result of a review of literature that focusses on the characteristics of teachers’ discourse and its distinctive features in online teaching environments, as well as reflection and analysis drawing on the author’s experience of systematic observation of his own rhetorical practice and that of teachers from his own field in the online university sphere. The main results focus on: testing the validity of the qualitative principles of puritas, perspicuitas, ornatus, and aptum in teachers’ online discourse, with particular attention to the case of perspicuitas; the need for special mastery of certain elements of strategic importance in verbal and non-verbal (oral and non-oral) composition; controlling certain rhetorical vices; and properly management of the time aspects of its execution and the resources that guarantee and strengthen feedback. This study considers several theses: the need to increase the auctoritas of online teachers in relation to their responsibility as a model of public communication in their professional practice, the advantages and disadvantages of using certain resources and supports, questions deriving from students’ “criterion of presence,” and the asymmetric manifestations of the relationship of communication online.

Please, cite this article as follows: López Navia, S. (2022). Retórica docente y enseñanza online en la educación universitaria | Rhetoric in teaching and e-learning in university education. Revista Española de Pedagogía, 80 (282), 331-345. https://doi.org/10.22550/REP80-2-2022-02