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Kerstin SewellOMDE 610 Section 9040
Position Paper
1
The Impact on the Social Presence to the Online Learner
Thesis Statement: Social presence is paramount to establishing and sustaining personal
connectivity in a collaborative learning environment.
IntroductionOnline learners learn through personal experiences and through experiences
shared by others provided via a virtual community environment. In online the online
environment, the communication format of asynchronous text via a computer-mediated
conferencing (CMC) presents a problem due to the lack of visual and auditory cues,
which assist in creating a socially rich environment like that of traditional education.
Reflecting on a case study of a university-level CMC course, Mark Bullen (1998) stated
that:
“For some students the lack of facial expressions and voice intonation
made computer conferencing a less human form of communication. For
these students there was no “virtual community”.” (p. 9).
The challenge of practitioners is to build or encourage social presence in online learning
that will overcome the absence of visual and auditory cues. Without a personal and
social connection to learning, an online community can not be sustained. Student
interaction and communication aid in creating a social environment. Some scholarly
works have debated CMC’s ability to support social and affective interactions, but the
research of literature performed in this paper should counter their doubts.
Many first-comers to online education will experience difficulty with
transitioning to the lack of visual and verbal expressions to which they are accustomed to
from past experiences in traditional education and may drop out; therefore it is the
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teacher that will need to establish a social environment on the first day or during pre-
course period, and then model, encourage, monitor, and facilitate the social environment
throughout the remainder of class to avoid a breach in connection to learning. Can a
social environment be established in an online classroom that is restricted of visual and
auditory cues, and if so, how can such a task be accomplished? This paper will answer
these questions, and then prove that social presence is paramount to establishing and
sustaining personal connectivity among students in a collaborative learning environment.
To prove my position, I will break socio-affective learning into the four following topics:
Communicative responses of social presence that tighten the bond of an online
community
The teacher’s role in social presence
Measurement strategies that assess social presence for the online teacher
Research study results on social presence and collaborative learning
Social Presence and Communicative ResponsesRourke et al. (2001) define social presence as the “ability of learners to project
themselves socially and emotionally in a community of inquiry” (p. 4). Social presence
is only one of three important elements of Rourke et al.’s (2001) community of inquiry
model that aims to identify the quality of teaching and learning interactions in online
learning. The other two elements that create the community of inquiry are teaching
presence, which represent the design and management of the structure and process of
learning, and cognitive presence, which represent the ability of students to construct
knowledge through communication. Social presence primarily supports both affective
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and cognitive objectives of teaching (Rourke et al., 2001) in an online collaborative
learning environment.
Researchers continually debate the credibility of social presence in the online
learning by arguing that students in asynchronous CMC environments can not project any
type of emotion, thus no social presence without being seen or audibly heard. These
researchers base their thoughts on the capabilities of the employed medium, rather than
the ability of the student to recreate their thoughts, expressions, and behavior within the
selected medium in a text-based expressive manner…or in other words by way of
“personal perceptions” (Rourke et al., 2001). In developing a method to assess social
presence in a CMC environment, Rourke et al. (2001) developed a form of analysis
through content coding. They were able to determine that there are three categories of
communicative responses: affective responses, interactive responses, and cohesive
responses. Furthermore, they indexed indicators of social interaction. By reviewing
these responses, we are able to prove the naysayers against online social presence wrong
and conclude that students are actively casting their attitudes, mood, feelings, and
behaviors in a text-based environment. The naysayers will also see that these aspects of
the student are detrimental to knowledge construction in the online learning community.
Communicative ResponsesAffective responses represent emotions, feelings, and mood which are
indicated by expression of emotions, humor, and self-disclosure in a CMC
environment. By using affective indicators such as emoticons, capitalization, and
punctuation, students can express feelings of joy, confusion, sadness, etc.
Emoticons are a great way of expressing emotion. Emoticons are written
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characters of text that serve as a visual representation of facial expressions and
other expressions of emotion. Garrison & Anderson (2003) note that humor can
express goodwill (p. 51) and initiate discussion, but should be used when
appropriate so that students don’t get isolated (p. 54). Teachers skilled in
inflicting social presence will ask students to connect content to personal life
experiences; this process is what Rourke et al. (2001) call self-disclosure. Self-
disclosure involves sharing personal details of life outside of the classroom; this
enables students to bond because some students can identify with those shared
similar experiences and feel as if they know their peers more.
Interactive responses build relationships among students and their teachers
through threaded discussion (open communication). Interactive responses
encourage participation by “recognizing, complimenting, and responding to
messages” (Garrison & Anderson, 2003, p. 51). In the online environment, you
will find several indicators of interactivity such as continuing a thread, quoting
another student’s message, referring explicitly to others’ messages, asking
questions, and complimenting, expressing appreciation, and expressing
agreement. Expressing these indicators or something as simple as replying to
someone’s comment can give the students feelings of acceptance and fulfillment,
and will encourage them to continue to participate and share with the community.
Rourke et al. (2001) note that needs of affiliation and self esteem can only be
accomplished through human interaction (p. 8).
Cohesive responses involve group activity discussion, to which glues the
students bond together. Student cohesion has a direct effect on student learning
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outcomes, as the discussion prompts deep thought and knowledge construction.
Garrison & Anderson’s (2003) statement supports this though when they state that
“when students perceive themselves as part of a community of inquiry, the
discourse, the sharing of meaning, and the quality of leaning outcomes will be
optimized” (p. 53). Indicators that best represent cohesive responses include
vocatives, and addressing or referring to groups using phatics and salutations.
Vocatives involve addressing students by first name; they are important to
showing the student that they have a voice and are being heard, and build strong
relationships among students. The use of vocatives helps to diminish the
“faceless” barrier behind CMC and demonstrate to all students that they definitely
are people behind the technology, whereas phatics confirm social cohesion
(Rourke et. al., 2001).
Teacher’s Role in the Social PresenceIt is the teacher’s responsibility to facilitate social presence in an online
collaborative learning environment. Tu (2002) observes that the teacher must “create an
environment that trains users to create social presence in a text-based medium and build
awareness in an online learning community” (p. 18). Reflecting on the previous
statement, the teacher needs to understand that their role in facilitating social presence in
the online classroom is a very critical component to the overall success of the classroom,
because without social presence, a learning community could not thrive. The teacher
should map out a plan on how to introduce the students to the new and acceptable
behaviors in an online community and inform them of how it will impact not just
themselves, but the entire class environment. An effective way to introduce students to
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the concept of social presence would be to give them a brief tutorial about it, and then
assign them a relatively easy pre-week activity catered towards using the differing types
of communicative responses. At the end of the pre-week the students would be
responsible for revealing how they felt to use or accept the communicative response, and
then the teacher could tie-in how socio-affective responses encourage learning and bring
together all students closer to a tight-nit community that invokes a broader sense of
learning. The teacher might also suggest that all students post biographies, and pictures,
or avatars, of themselves to increase familiarity among students and to give them a visual
connection of their peers. In reviewing student perception results on course design and
facilitation, Bullen (1998) notes that student’s would have like to participated in social
activities to get to know each other prior to participating in discussions (p. 11)…this is
another great strategy that a teacher could implore to increase social presence during pre-
week. In his Mykota (2007) proclaims that providing pre-course introduction of CMC
usage will: assist students with understanding their role and responsibilities in the online
environment, ensure that they perform to the best of their abilities in assignments and
other course work, and not apply tradition education communication skills to the online
environment.
During progression throughout the course, the teacher can use multiple methods
to track group cohesiveness, and encourage or intervene in the online community as
needed. The best practices in encouraging social presence in an online community are to:
share personal experiences, actively participate in asynchronous conference discussions,
responding to student by their first names (Mykota, 2007), and respond to questions in a
time sensitive manner. Most importantly, a teacher should model appropriate message
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and responses (Garrison, 2003). By conducting these non-complex tasks, students will
feel important, comforted, and as if they belong.
Measurement Strategies for Social PresenceSocial presence analysis should be considered by researchers and most
importantly teachers to ensure that the students are getting the best possible learning
outcomes. Mykota & Duncan (2007) discuss this thought when they explain that “social
presence is one of the more important constructs to determine the level of interaction, and
effectiveness of learning in an online environment” (p. 161). There are not too many
methods of content analysis developed and studied by researchers available that take a
look at the quantity of social presence in computer conferencing. More development of
these methods would allow for teachers and researchers to see a relationship between
learning outcomes and social, cognitive, and teaching presences. The method that I will
discuss is Rourke et al.’s (2001) social presence density calculation.
In their quest for an accurate and useful tool to assess social presence in a CMC
environment, Rourke et al. (2001) developed a template based equal on their 12
indicators of communicative responses. The main goal of their method was to identify
low or high frequencies of social presence, with low indicating a distant environment,
and high indicating a pleasant environment. Their method called for observations of
specific indicators within posted comments on of both a “thematic” and “syntactical”
units (Rourke et al, 2001). Three researchers worked together to initially code comments,
and then develop a protocol establishing rules and procedures for individual coding. In
the next step of their method, two of the coders independently code the student messages.
Finally, the coder’s data is calculated into percent agreement estimates of interrater
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reliability using a coefficient of reliability figure. Reflecting on the results of their study,
this method could be improved to apply more focus and different ratings on indicators of
more importance and higher frequencies…Rourke et. al (2001) applied equal weighting
to all indicators in their method. It can be proven that the differences of courses may
provide more opportunities for certain communicative indicators, for example, some
courses invoke more small study groups, which in turn teachers would cause teachers to
expect more cohesive indicators. This method was created in 2001, but research
conducted for this paper hasn’t found a notable amount of scholarly articles to identify
any successful or meaningful methods to assess social presence.
Research Study Results on Social Presence and Collaborative Learning
Stacey (2002) performed two studies that researched small group collaborative
learning. The first study reviewed messages sent within a small group of students in
Australia within a Masters of Business Administration program. The results of the study
identified that more than 50% of the messages were applicable to binding the group
together in a supportive and encouraging manner (Stacey, 2002); these messages helped
the students to feel part of the group.
The second study divulged deeper into the connection between learning outcomes
and the group environment, and also looked into the role of the teacher to establish social
presence in the online community. Stacey (2002) categorized the both teacher and
student messages into Rourke et al.’s (2001) social presence communicative responses
(affective, interactive, and cohesive) week by week, and was able to identify that the
teacher’s influence of social presence was detrimental to the success of the classroom.
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The teacher posted the most social presence discussion comments in the first week of the
course. In this first week, the teacher adequately modeled social presence, and in the
following weeks the students successfully masked their teacher’s behavior within the
overall community and most notably within their small groups. Looking deeper into the
small group environment, one would assume that stronger relationships would thrive due
to the consistent and continual discussion with the same members; thus saying, these
group members have a common interest and build social and emotional support
relationships in order to come to a consensus on tasks, goals, and theories.
This research study was able to conclude that teachers play a major role in
initiating and facilitating social presence among students as previously discussed in the
“Teacher’s Role in Social Presence” section of this paper. The students were able to
identify affective, interactive, and cohesive behaviors modeled by the instructor, analyze
those behaviors, and understand that it was appropriate and expected to be imitated. This
research study was also able to conclude that social presence served as motivation for the
students to and establish relationships and increase cognitive discussion (Stacey, p. 292).
ConclusionLajbcyier (2005) said that “Social presence and teacher responsiveness and the
way in which sociality develops is important in developing the interaction that
contributes to positive cognitive learning experiences” (p. 7). This paper has identified
that social presence is integral to developing an insightful learning environment. The
social relationships that students develop with each other and their instructors will help
them to fill the void of isolation and will motivate them to interact more frequently and
develop a better understanding of content. This paper also identified the importance of
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the teacher’s role in initiating social presence. The teacher must model the expected
behavior to encourage students to follow in suit. The teacher can develop an abundance
of activities, such as allowing the student to identify those feelings of isolation in the pre-
week or first week of discussion, then subsequently following up with the entire student
body by explaining how social presence may solve the feelings of isolation. This paper
concluded by discussing measurement strategies and research findings of social presence.
Distance Education and communicative technology is constantly changing, thus further
research and methods of assessing social presence need to be performed to ensure that
social presence methods are implemented into communicative technology to generate
student relationships and meaningful learning.
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References
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