The importance of Social Presence in Online Courses

People frequently criticize the online environment for being cold. They say that during online courses they feel lonely and demotivated to learn.

And why is that?

Studies about Social Presence might help us understand about an important aspect in online courses.

What is Social Presence?

According to Menezes (2014), Social Presence is how people perceive their own presence and the presence of others in a virtual interaction and the willingness to build an interpersonal relationship in order to learn collaboratively.

To me, Social Presence depends a lot on how participants choose to take part in an online course. Of course, it also depends on the opportunities of interaction provided during the course.

Let's compare two students:

Student A studies alone. He uses books and the internet to build knowledge.

Student B is taking a course with other students. Besides learning via the material suggested by his teacher, he likes exchanging ideas and discussing about what he's been learning with his classmates.

In the virtual world we can have a similar situation. We can choose to act like Student A, focussing on developing tasks on our own or we can behave like Student B making use of the opportunity to work with the group exchanging ideas and making connections.

We should bear in mind three kinds of course content we can learn from:
- The content proposed by the teacher.
- The content suggested by participants.
- The content built by participants during the course.

When we study alone during an online course, we might be missing the opportunity to learn more with one another.

Here are few tips on how to develop your presence during online courses:

REFERENCE:

MENEZES, A. M. C. A vivência da presença social: histórias de um curso online para professores de Inglês. (2014) M.A. Thesis. 186 p. Universidade Federal de Uberlândia. http://goo.gl/kNyAck

SUGGESTED READINGS:

REVISTA TECNOLOGIA EDUCACIONAL
ISSN 0102-5503 - Ano LI - 200
Janeiro / Março - 2013
Revista da Associação Brasileira de Tecnologia Educacional v. 31 
http://www.academia.edu/3764280/Revista_abt_2013_artigo_p_62

GARRISON, D. (2006)Online Collaboration Principles. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks. Vol. 10, No. 1, p. 25-34. Disponível em <http://tinyurl.com/6r9bjwz >, acesso em 16/04/12.

GUNAWARDENA, C. N. (1995)Social presence theory and implications for interaction and collaborative learning in computer conferences. International Journal of Educational Telecommunications, p. 147-166.

My research: Living Social Presence

I normally post in English because of the different people who follow this blog and speak other languages. However, today I'd like to share the result of the work I've been developing (in Brazil) for the last two years: my M.A. thesis.

Why did I decide to study about Social Presence?

Well, I start my thesis telling a story about a period of my life that because health problems I couldn't be in a real classroom in contact with my students. In an attempt to feel useful and share some knowledge with other teachers, I created an online course for EFL teachers and for the first time moderated an online course on my own. With this experience, the virtual learning environment was no longer a cold and impersonal place, but a space where I met people in order to exchange ideas and learn. This is my personal reason for the interest to understand about Social Presence.

What were my objectives?

I wanted to observe and analyze how participants of an online course live Social Presence and some implications of our conceptions of Social Presence to the learning process during the course.

And what is Social Presence?

Although there is no unique definition for this concept, based on my studies, I believe Social Presence is the degree in which you perceive your presence and the presence of others in a virtual interaction and the willingness to develop an interpersonal relationship aiming collaborative learning.

My defense took place this morning and as I promised to share my presentation with the research participants and my friends, here it is. The research was carried out in Brazil in Portuguese, so the slides and the recording are in my mother tongue.

This is a recording I made in order to practise for the defense: (IN PORTUGUESE)


Presença Social from Ana Maria Menezes on Vimeo.

And these are the slides (PREZI) I used for my presentation this morning.
http://prezi.com/aicu8mvelpf1/vivendo-a-presenca-social/#

The experience of having my work discussed by Cláudia Hilsdorf and Valeska Soares Souza was pure enjoyment. I have to thank them for the contributions to my work.

If you wish to read the whole paper (in Portuguese), there's a version online at the blog where I've shared my writing since the beginning of the research  http://ufuanamariamenezes.blogspot.com.br  or flipping the pages below. This is the version I handed in for my defense. Please, bear in mind it's not the final version yet.

At Scribd: http://www.scribd.com/doc/209558265/Vivendo-a-Presenca-Social-historias-de-um-curso-online-para-professores-de-Ingles