Enhancing Social Interaction in an Online Educational Environment (original) (raw)

Facilitating active social presence and meaningful interactions in online learning

Education and Information Technologies, 2012

Online learning has minimized many barriers and constraints that are common in traditional learning environments. However, due to the absence of faceto-face contacts, students and instructors are usually faced with the lack of active social presence and meaningful interactions in online learning. This article explores a review of the literature on social presence and various types of interactions in online learning environments in the context of a class project. The findings suggest need for online instructors to explore effective ways to design and facilitate active social presence and meaningful interactions in online learning.

Social Presence and e-Learning

ABSTRACT “Social presence” can be defined as the ability of participants in online discussions both to perceive other participants as “real people” and to project themselves socially and affectively into the disussion. This paper explores the concept of social presence and its relationship to learning online, through a review of research studies to date investigating these topics and a summary of their findings.

The evolution and influence of social presence theory on online learning

Online education and adult learning: New frontiers for teaching practices, 2009

The theory of social presence is perhaps the most popular construct used to describe and understand how people socially interact in online learning environments. However, despite its intuitive appeal, researchers and practitioners alike often define and conceptualize this popular construct differently. In fact, it is often hard to distinguish between whether someone is talking about social interaction, immediacy, intimacy, emotion, and/or connectedness when they talk about social presence. Therefore, the focus of this chapter is on outlining the evolution of the construct of social presence in an effort to understand better its relationship to online learning.

A model for social presence in online classrooms

Educational Technology Research and Development, 2012

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Establishing the Importance of Interaction and Presence to Student Learning in Online Environments

With the growing trends in favor of online course offerings in higher education, it is important that researchers continue to focus on investigating the components vital to effectiveness. Using a survey design, the elements of interaction and presence, and their relationship and influence on student learning in an online course is examined in the current study. The findings of the study suggest that students perceive instructor-learner and learner-content interaction to be more important to their learning as compared to learner-learner interaction. In addition, teaching presence plays a more important role in student learning followed by cognitive presence and then social presence. Again, when it comes to the combination of the factors of interaction and presence, the factors that students perceive to have the most influence on their learning are teaching presence and learner-instructor interaction with the least important factor being learner-learner interaction. Overall, the results of this empirical study have implications for online course design and delivery to ensure student learning in online environments.

Social Presence and Student Engagement in Online Learning

Cross-Cultural Online Learning in Higher Education and Corporate Training

Effective online learning practices should incorporate an active social presence that provides space and technological support for students and instructors to engage in social activities, which are an integral part of the learning process. The focus of this chapter is the description of social presence, the forms in which it occurs, and how social presence enhances student engagement in the learning process, whether online or face-to-face. Based on various studies related to this topic, the authors argue that social presence has a significant impact on student engagement, especially in online classes. Finally, this chapter examines how social presence affects student engagement and offers various strategies for instructors to enhance social presence and student engagement in online learning.

Students social presence in online learning: a review

2014

One of the most highlighted issue in online learning as mentioned by Badrinathan and Gole (2011), is the teacher or instructor is responsible to ensure that interaction occurs among students. The interaction plays important role to encourage students to share opinion, think and argue critically, and respond towards peer’s reflection via computer mediated communication (CMC). To support the idea of having interactive and meaningful communication, Short et al (1976) had promoted a theory called social presence. This theory has then been frequently implemented and selected to be the core subject experimented in previous studies (Richardson & Swan, 2003; Rourke et.al, 1999; Wenger, 1998; Tu, 2001; Saenz, 2002; Lapadat, 2003; Sung & Mayer, 2012). As a result, Cobb (2009) clarifies that social presence should be nurtured for the successful of online learning.

Developing a “Social Presence Scale” for E-learning Environments

Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, 2014

There have been various studies on developing the efficiency of the e-learning environment, as these environments have become more prevalent in recent years (O'Neil, 2008; Reiser & Dempsey, 2012). Despite the benefits of education in these environments, the communication problem due to physical separation of the tutor and the learner is one of the main issues discussed in the literature. In order to overcome this problem and to ease learners' communication with others, e-learning environments are enriched with social communication tools (Sung & Mayer, 2012). Because of the fact that social presence is a problematic term, it is described in various ways by different researchers (Annand, 2011; Cui, Lockee, & Meng, 2012). Short, Williams, and Christie (1976) define social presence as the salience of the other in mediated communication and the consequent salience of their inter-personal interactions. Gunawardena and Zittle (1997) describe it as a Ebru KILIÇ ÇAKMAK, Ph.D., is currently an associate professor of Computer Education and Instructional Technology. Her research interests include e-learning, instructional design, multimedia design, human-computer interaction and scale development.

Social Presence and Online Learning: A Review of Research

2011

This article traces the evolution of the construct of social presence, focusing on its definition and conceptualization within online learning. The review here categorizes the research into three "eras" through which the history and evaluation of social presence can be summarized. The review reveals three fundamental concepts that are consistently emphasized in the research on social presence. The idea of social presence has long informed what is currently considered good practice in online learning. Yet, questions exist regarding how it can best be measured or conceptualized, and its relationship with learning outcomes remains unclear. Résumé Cet article analyse les parallèles et les sujets de dissension existant dans la littérature portant sur la présence sociale en identifiant comment la présence sociale est définie et opérationnalisée dans la littérature scientifique traitant de l'apprentissage en ligne. La revue de la littérature divise la recherche en trois « époques » à travers lesquelles il est possible de résumer l'histoire et l'évaluation de la théorie de la présence sociale. De plus, la revue de littérature identifie quatre notions fondamentales qui sont constamment mises en relief dans la recherche traitant de la présence sociale. Toutefois, on continue à se poser des questions sur comment conceptualiser et mesurer celle-ci, de même que sur comment la présence sociale est liée à l'apprentissage.