This document discusses social presence in online courses. It begins with an overview of the concept of social presence theory and its history. It then outlines the evolution of social presence research over time from a focus on telecommunications to computer-mediated communication (CMC) to online learning. Key figures and their work in different eras are identified. The document also discusses varied understandings of social presence and strategies to build social presence, community, and learning community through interaction. It concludes with mentioning recent work on instructor social presence, situated presence, and findings that video is not always the best medium for presence.
Scholars across many disciplines have grappled with questions of what it means for a person to
be and interact online. Who are we when we go online? How do others know we are there and
how do they perceive us? Within the context of online learning, scholarly questions tend to
reflect more specific concerns focused on how well people can learn in a setting limited to
mediated interactions lacking various communication cues. For example, how can a teacher and
students come to know each other if they cannot see each other? How can they effectively
understand and communicate with each other if they are separated by space and, in many
instances, time? These concerns are related to issues of social presence and identity, both of
which are complex, multi-faceted, closely interrelated constructs.
Thinking Differently About Social Presence in Online Courses -- Northwest eLe...Patrick Lowenthal
Social presence is a popular construct in online learning. But it was originally developed by Short, Williams, and Christie (1976) to explain the effect telecommunications media can have on communication. Over the years, social presence theory has become much more nuanced. This presentation will illustrate how social presence theory has changed over the years and the implications of these changes for faculty and instructional designers.
Social presence theory is a central concept in online learning. Hundreds of studies have investigated social presence and online learning. However, despite the continued interest in social presence and online learning, many questions remain about the nature and development of social presence. Part of this might be due to the fact that the majority of past research has focused on students' perceptions of social presence rather than on how students actually establish their social presence in online learning environments. Using the Community of Inquiry Framework, this study explores how social presence manifests in a fully asynchronous online course in order to help instructional designers and faculty understand how to intentionally design opportunities for students to establish and maintain their social presence. This study employs a mixed-methods approach using word count, content analysis, and constant-comparison analysis to examine threaded discussions in a totally online graduate education course. The results of this study suggest that social presence is more complicated than previously imagined and that situational variables such as group size, instructional task, and previous relationships might influence how social presence is established and maintained in threaded discussions in a fully online course.
Scholars across many disciplines have grappled with questions of what it means for a person to
be and interact online. Who are we when we go online? How do others know we are there and
how do they perceive us? Within the context of online learning, scholarly questions tend to
reflect more specific concerns focused on how well people can learn in a setting limited to
mediated interactions lacking various communication cues. For example, how can a teacher and
students come to know each other if they cannot see each other? How can they effectively
understand and communicate with each other if they are separated by space and, in many
instances, time? These concerns are related to issues of social presence and identity, both of
which are complex, multi-faceted, closely interrelated constructs.
Thinking Differently About Social Presence in Online Courses -- Northwest eLe...Patrick Lowenthal
Social presence is a popular construct in online learning. But it was originally developed by Short, Williams, and Christie (1976) to explain the effect telecommunications media can have on communication. Over the years, social presence theory has become much more nuanced. This presentation will illustrate how social presence theory has changed over the years and the implications of these changes for faculty and instructional designers.
Social presence theory is a central concept in online learning. Hundreds of studies have investigated social presence and online learning. However, despite the continued interest in social presence and online learning, many questions remain about the nature and development of social presence. Part of this might be due to the fact that the majority of past research has focused on students' perceptions of social presence rather than on how students actually establish their social presence in online learning environments. Using the Community of Inquiry Framework, this study explores how social presence manifests in a fully asynchronous online course in order to help instructional designers and faculty understand how to intentionally design opportunities for students to establish and maintain their social presence. This study employs a mixed-methods approach using word count, content analysis, and constant-comparison analysis to examine threaded discussions in a totally online graduate education course. The results of this study suggest that social presence is more complicated than previously imagined and that situational variables such as group size, instructional task, and previous relationships might influence how social presence is established and maintained in threaded discussions in a fully online course.
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Faculty and students investigated the impact of social media on asynchronous and synchronous engagement in an online interprofessional PhD. The instructional design intentionally integrates the Scholarship of Technology Enhanced Learning (SoTEL) and Community of Inquiry (COI) framework. We evaluated community, teaching, and learning through course analytics; analysis of Social Presence in a SoTL-COI survey; and self-reported student perceptions. Partnering breaks down barriers between teachers and students. Results provide insights into teaching and learning within the virtual community. We present the instructional design framing the SoTEL inquiry, findings on asynchronous and synchronous engagement, and future directions.
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And Justice for All: Using Artificial Environments to Create Community and Te...AJ Kelton
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In this presentation we provide a background of social presence theory and then cover strategies we have used to establish social presence in our own courses.
Sabine Little, Facilitating inquiry-based learning from afarcilass.slideshare
A presentation - Facilitating inquiry-based learning from afar: Educational research in the Caribbean - given by Dr Sabine Little at the following conference: ALT-C conference, Edinburgh, September 2006
SoTEL from the Start: Examining the Impact of Social Media on Community, Teac...Anita Zijdemans Boudreau
Presented at the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (ISSoTL) 2019
Faculty and students investigated the impact of social media on asynchronous and synchronous engagement in an online interprofessional PhD. The instructional design intentionally integrates the Scholarship of Technology Enhanced Learning (SoTEL) and Community of Inquiry (COI) framework. We evaluated community, teaching, and learning through course analytics; analysis of Social Presence in a SoTL-COI survey; and self-reported student perceptions. Partnering breaks down barriers between teachers and students. Results provide insights into teaching and learning within the virtual community. We present the instructional design framing the SoTEL inquiry, findings on asynchronous and synchronous engagement, and future directions.
Speak up! Transforming Classroom Discussions
Some students enjoy speaking up in class while others don't. This is a potential situation in many classrooms. In what ways then, can we promote more students to share their ideas?
This presentation will briefly introduce research undertaken on face-to-face and virtual discussions and discuss some of the literature involved. Based on the findings, I will also highlight some of the benefits of virtual discussions and provide links for experiment in your classrooms.
And Justice for All: Using Artificial Environments to Create Community and Te...AJ Kelton
Original presented by Leslie Wilson, Laura Nicosia, and AJ Kelton at the National Network for Educational Renewal (NNER) 2009 Annual Conference in Bellevue, Washingon, on October 16, 2009.
How electronic networks and artificial environments, including Twitter, Facebook, Ning, and Second Life, promote ideas of democracy for students, future teachers, and faculty. We will discuss how these tools foster democratic choices leading to the growth of future teachers in establishing societal rules in the classroom.
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Northwest eLearn 2012 - Establishing Social Presence in Online Learning Envir...Patrick Lowenthal
In this presentation we provide a background of social presence theory and then cover strategies we have used to establish social presence in our own courses.
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Tuesday, June 10, 2014 11:00:00 AM MDT - 12:00:00 PM MDT
Online learning continues to grow and make up a larger percentage of enrollments in higher education. However, over the years, institutions often report higher attrition rates for online courses than traditional face-to-face courses. As enrollments in online courses increase and online learning becomes a larger part of institutions' long-term planning, faculty and administrators are confronted with finding ways to improve retention in online courses and online programs. In this free webinar, presented by Academic Partnerships, the literature on attrition in online learning will be discussed as well as various strategies used to improve student retention in online learning.
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4. Social Presence Theory
Social presence is the degree
of salience (i.e., quality or
state of being there) between
two communicators using a
communication medium.
7. 1980’s & CMC
Cuelessness Theory
developed by Rutter (1984, 1987)
Media Richness Theory
developed by Daft & Lengel
(1984, 1986; Daft, Lengel, &
Trevino, 1987)
slides @ patricklowenthal.com
10. Phase Period Key Figures Focus of Research
1. 1970s Short et al. Focused on
Telecommunications
2. 1980s to early
1990s
Rutter
Daft & Lengel
Kiesler
Walther
Focused on CMC
3. Early 1990s to
early 2000s
Gunarwardena
Garrison et al.
Tu
Swan
Richardson
Focused on Online
Learning
4. Mid 2000s to
present
Garrison
Shea
Cleveland-Innes
Akyol
Swan
Richardson
Focused on Online
Learning & the CoI
slides @ patricklowenthal.com
12. slides @ patricklowenthal.com
Affective Communication
• Expression of emotions
• Use of humor
• Self-disclosure
Cohesive Communication
• Continuing a thread
• Quoting from others’ messages
• Referring explicitly to other’s messages
• Asking questions
• Complimenting, expressing
appreciation
• Expressing agreement
Interactive Communication
• Vocatives
• Refers to group using inclusive
pronouns
• Phatics, salutations
+
18. Social Presence Strategies
Bio strategies
Orientation strategies
Reconnecting strategies
Feedback strategies
Discussion strategies
Small group strategies
Organic interaction strategies
19. Teacher Bios
Digital Stories Scholarship & Philosophy
For more info:
Intentional Web Presence: 10 SEO Strategies
Every Academic Needs to Know
For more info:
From Pixel on a Screen to Real Person in Your
Students’ Lives: Establishing Social Presence…
22. Student Bios
Photo Roster5 minute phone call
For more info:
Defeating the Kobayashi Maru: Supporting
Student Retention by Balancing the Needs of the
Many and the One
24. Reconnecting Strategies
Soundtrack of your life Virtual Paper Bag
For more info:
Hot for teacher: Using digital music to enhance
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27. Small Group Strategies
Peer Review
Group Work
Document Co-Creation
For more info:
Learning, unlearning, and relearning: Using Web 2.0
technologies to support the development of lifelong learning skills
5-minute conversations. During the first few weeks of our courses, we also invite students to participate in a 5-minute phone conversation with us. We do this so our students might feel more connected and less distant from us. We have found that these early phone conversations lead to subsequent phone conversations with students for purposes of project brainstorming, content clarification, and formative feedback—and in a much more efficient and personal way than if we had participated in the same exchanges via a threaded discussion.
For more info: http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/defeating-kobayashi-maru-supporting-student-retention-balancing-needs-many-and-one
Image source: http://gretachristina.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341bf68b53ef0120a594d455970c-popup
Personalized, Detailed Feedback
Assessment and evaluation (and the feedback it entails) are difficult aspects of teaching. Whenever possible we strive to provide personalized and detailed feedback to our students to not only improve the learning process but also to maintain our social presence and connection with each student throughout the semester. The following are a few ways that we do this:
One-on-one and group emails. As low tech as it might appear and while it goes against the school of thought that all communication should be kept within the LMS, we are strong believers in the power of one-on-one emails (see Dunlap & Lowenthal, 2010c). While we use one-on-one and group emails in a variety of ways throughout the semester, we primarily use it as a way to provide personalized detailed feedback with our students.
Video feedback. Sometimes though we find the need to provide feedback in a different—high tech—format. For instance, Patrick uses screen recording tools like Jing to provide video feedback to his students on certain assignments in which it is hard to provide feedback in text alone. While cumbersome in that you have to get all set up with your microphone and the software and so forth, students have commented on how valuable it is to hear both the positive and the negative feedback in the tone of our voices.
Threaded Discussions
Threaded discussions have been described as the bread and butter of online courses because they are often the primary tool used for student-instructor and student-student communication and interaction. They are a great way for students to test their new knowledge, represent their conceptual understanding, and find their professional voices. However, we have found over the years—and the literature supports our experience—that threaded discussions in and of themselves are not inherently good or bad. Rather, their worth typically depends on how they are set up and used in any given course. Therefore, we tend to think a lot about how, when, and why we use threaded discussions to ensure they consistently benefit and support student learning and social presence. The following are a couple of ways we use threaded discussions for social presence purposes:
Non-threatening discussions. We don’t assume our students know how to effectively use online threaded discussions. For purposes of practicing online discussion (using the tools, protocols, etiquette, etc.), we provide our students with ample opportunities to discuss non-threatening, low-judgmental topics as well as non-course related topics (see Dunlap, 2009a, under Further Readings). For example: We have students visit the Picassohead website (www.picassohead.com) and create a self-portrait, then submit a link to a threaded discussion forum. Once posted, we encourage students to comment on each other’s artwork. We also post entertaining photos (not directly related to the course content) and ask students to share their captions. Student captions for the following image have included:
Wait please! I do have good news...I just saved tons of money on my car insurance by switching to Geico.
I can take the giant brain, I can take the claws for hands, but why must you insist on wearing blue leather pants every time we go out?
Listen, you're a nice guy and have a great personality, but my mother simply won't accept a son-in-law whose brain is on the outside.
Activities like this can help introduce humor into threaded discussions which can be difficult to do—but also can help with social presence (see Figure 11).
[Image 11 goes here]
Discussion Protocols. The same-old-same-old threaded discussion forum format (i.e., instructor posts a question, and each student is required to post an original response and comment on posts from two peers) can be detrimental to social presence and student engagement. Therefore, we use different discussion protocols to ensure the continuing benefit of online discussions while minimizing the potential boredom that comes from threaded-discussion misuse and overuse, and maximizing social presence through student responsibility and engagement (see Dunlap, 2009b, under Further Readings). Discussion protocols also serve to balance student voices, ensuring that everyone in the class has the same opportunity to contribute to the discussion. Finally, discussion protocols provide students with specific roles and directions for how to engage in a productive discussion. An example of a discussion protocol we us is The Final Post, which we adapted for online discussion from McDonald et al.’s (2003) The Final Word protocol, for which the steps are:
Working in a small group of 4-5 students, each student identifies one of the most significant ideas from the reading, illustrated by a quote or excerpt. (Each student should have a back‐up quote/excerpt in case another student has already posted the same quote/excerpt.)
Each student starts a new thread by posting the quote/excerpt from the text that particularly struck her or him. The student points out where the quote is in the text. In approximately 250 words, the student describes why that quote/excerpt struck her or him. (Specify a deadline for the original posts.)
Each student responds to that quote/excerpt and what the original student wrote, using approximately 150 words. The purpose of the response is to expand on the original student's thinking about the topic, to provide a different perspective on the topic, to clarify thinking about the topic, and to question the original student's assumptions about the topic. (Specify a deadline for these posts.)
After each student in the group has responded to the original post, the first student has the “final word.” In approximately 150 words, the original student responds to what has been shared by the rest of the group, offering what she or he is now thinking about the topic, and her or his reaction to what the other students have posted. (Specify a deadline for the “final word” post.)
This process continues until everyone has had the opportunity to have the “final word.” This means that 4‐5 discussions are happening simultaneously within a particular timeframe (e.g., 1 week), or that they are happening one at a time (each discussion over 1‐2 days).
For more info: http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/CUOnline/FacultyResources/additionalResources/Handbook/Documents/DiscussionProtocols.pdf
Small Groups
Through small-group work and collaboration, students experience and develop an appreciation for multiple perspectives; refine their knowledge through argumentation, structured controversy, and the sharing of ideas and perspectives; learn to use colleagues as resources; and are more willing to take on the risk required to tackle complex, ill-structured problems (Dunlap & Grabinger, 2003). Because of the potential value of small-group work and collaboration on student learning and engagement, and because it is a clear way of involving students in student-student interactions that enhance social presence, we use various small-group and collaboration strategies and activities in our online courses (see Dunlap, 2009c, under Further Readings). Below we describe a few of our activities.
Peer review. A good way to establish and maintain social presence among students in an online course is through peer review activities. Peer review, while a very authentic activity, is one we find many students struggle with. Therefore, we use a “no penalty” approach to peer reviews:
The peer review teams are posted in the forum where you will post your drafts of this project. In terms of process, as a starting place, I suggest that you review the project description and assessment tool (not that you already aren't quite familiar) as a reminder of what everyone is aiming for. Please provide your peers with honest constructive feedback on the design of their instructional presentations, answering the five questions they provided to guide your review; you must provide at least one suggestion for improvement for each question. Your job as a peer reviewer is to help your peers create the best possible product, so you do them no service is you are not honest and open with your feedback. Be constructive and professional. Please provide 500 words of feedback in response to the five questions each peer asks you to consider. Thank you! [Final note: If when you sit down to do the peer reviews you find that one of your peers has not posted a draft by the due date, then you are not held responsible. The peer who did not post by the due date will lose out on valuable feedback (and points), and you will receive credit for the review regardless.]
“No Jeopardy” group work. While many faculty often avoid using group work online to avoid any potential headaches (Wray, Lowenthal, Bates, & Stevens, 2008), we are strong believers in the importance of collaborating with others as well as learning how to effectively work with a group online—not to mention the inherent social presence opportunities when working closely with one’s peers. We use “no jeopardy” approaches to collaborative work that allow for a submitted product to be complete without a missing member’s contribution. Examples include: each student completes an allocated task that contributes to the final team product and gets the marks for that task; each student writes and submits an individual report based on the team’s work on the task/project; each student takes an exam, with exam questions that specifically target the team project, and can only be answered by students who have been thoroughly involved in the project; each student’s contribution is assessed via individually-produced evidence such as status reports, journals, time logs, and direct observation; each student produces an individual paper based on the team project.
Document Co-Creation. Finally, we often use Google Docs and Spreadsheets in our online courses to support students' document co-creation activities and enhance social presence. One example of this use is students' co-creation of a Top-100 List of Design Guidelines (also called the What We Know List), used to support their instructional design work (see Figure 12). Developed in Google Docs over the course of the semester, students contribute new design guidelines with supporting citations based on the coursework and readings. By the end of the semester, students walk away with a robust set of design guidelines summarizing the readings that can be used as they continue their design work outside of the course. Google Docs makes it possible for our online students to collectively develop a unique document, each sharing expertise, reviewing each others' contributions for appropriate modifications and redundancy reductions, summarizing and synthesizing what they have learned from the course readings, and reflecting on the value of their individual contributions and the value of the collection of guidelines in general.
For more info
http://patricklowenthal.com/learning-unlearning-and-relearning-using-web-2-0-technologies-to-support-the-development-of-lifelong-learning-skills/
Free-flowing, organic interactions
Last but not least, one of our most recent attempts at establishing and maintaining social presence in our courses involves social networking tools—specifically, Twitter. We began using Twitter (and inviting our students to follow us) because we wanted to have an informal, playful way for our online students to connect with us and each other throughout the day.
On our quest for the social presence grail—as effective as we thought many of the strategies we have previously discussed were—we felt confined within the structure of the LMS. This was exasperated by the fact that we have been missing the informal, playful banter and chit-chat that is possible when everyone is physically located in the same geographic space. This banter helps students connect with us, and experience our personalities. And, it helps them connect with each other in a more emotional way. Twitter seemed to have potential to further support our social-presence efforts.
Twitter. We invite our students to follow us on Twitter and to follow each other. In addition, we provide a list of people outside of the course who tweet about course-relevant topics to follow as well as a number of publications and professional organizations.
Our decision to use Twitter to enhance social presence in our online courses was reinforced by students’ experiences (see Dunlap & Lowenthal, 2009a, 2009b) as well as the plain fact that our communications via Twitter seemed much more natural than logging into our LMS, getting into the course shell, then getting into a discussion forum and posting a message . . . and then waiting for someone to respond later (after she or he has already moved on to other work, thoughts, issues). But unlike many of the other strategies, we found Twitter to be an extremely time consuming strategy so we were left wondering about its effectiveness.
For more info
http://patricklowenthal.com/tweeting-the-night-away-using-twitter-to-enhance-social-presence/