Module 4 Introduction to Social Presence

Time to Read: about 6 minutes

Learning alone feels unnatural for many people. At the very least, it can be a rather lonely experience. People are present in our in-person learning environment by necessity. It would seem bizarre to be the only student sitting in the lecture hall while your lecturer keeps looking at you with an expression begging you to move closer. You probably wouldn't remain sitting alone in a lecture room attempting to learn from materials mysteriously left there. Right? Unfortunately, lonely online-learning experiences are still common. Students learn from text and video and audio recordings with little indication that there's anyone on the other end and no idea if anyone else is suffering alongside them.

If we were to flip this analogy around and view it from the perspective of the instructor, would you lecture to an empty room? How would that feel? What's running through your mind other than updating your resume? How would it feel to go through the effort of creating digital learning materials with no indication of who is using them, how they're being used, or the outcomes achieved by using your materials?

People are important for learning and teaching. In online learning environments, we must work extra hard to create a place where we can come together and interact with others at a distance. We often hear of creating instructor presence in our online courses. Let's expand that to social presence. Students need to know a person is teaching them and they need opportunities to interact with their peers. And you, the instructor, need them to be there too. Teaching to the void that fills the space between our interconnected devices is just as lonely as trying to learn from it.

Supporting social presence

Social presence in online courses is a result of crafting opportunities for students to engage with their peers and making yourself available in the course both asynchronously through recorded video and other messaging, and synchronously through virtual office hours and other real-time course activities. Social presence is complex and builds throughout the duration of the course.

These are five items to keep in mind as you develop social presence in your course.

Tone

A recent study looking into the impact of online course organization, learning objectives, effective technology, and interpersonal interactions found that only the quality of interpersonal interactions was predictive of student grades (Jaggars & Xu, 2016). In other words, how well the instructor was able to communicate their care and support of their learners impacted their students’ performance in their course.

Visibility

Even small movements toward connection such as the instructor being visible in the video recording and making ‘eye contact’ with the camera can improve student performance on content (Fiorella et al., 2019).

Courses in which the instructor posted frequently, invited student questions through a variety of modalities, responded to student queries quickly, solicited and incorporated student feedback, and (perhaps most importantly) demonstrated a sense of “caring” created an online environment that encouraged students to commit themselves to the course and perform at a stronger academic level (Jaggars & Xu, 2016).

The results indicate that the quality of interpersonal interaction within a course relates positively and significantly to student grades. Additional analyses based on course observation and interview data suggest that frequent and effective student-instructor interaction creates an online environment that encourages students to commit themselves to the course and perform at a stronger academic level (Jaggars & Xu, 2016).

Consistency

Consistency of messaging is important, and it is a point that we have previously addressed throughout TOLC. Your written messaging and tone must match the tone and messaging of your actions. Students are very perceptive of any mismatch between what you write, what you say, and what you do.

Safety

In online learning environments, safety is the feeling that one can freely and fully express themselves. Our efforts to bring everyone together in an online learning space can all be for naught if people do not feel that they can participate, share their ideas and opinions, or engage with sensitive and controversial material in an academic way. This is not about censoring ourselves or our students. It's about establishing expectations for behavior on which everyone agrees.

Safety is tied to course climate. Like social presence, safety is a result of many elements coming together from the tone and messaging of your syllabus to your plans for mediating friction between students in course discussions and group work. This Inclusive Classroom Climate guide from Yale university has more information to help you construct a safe and inclusive course climate. TOLC revisits course climate on this page in Module 4.

Belonging

Human connection is not just nice to have, it is the bedrock on which learning is built (Hammond, 2015). Emotional safety is required for learning. Why is that? If you don't feel emotionally safe, your body goes into fight, flight, freeze - triggered by the amygdala. When this happens, you don't have access to your prefrontal cortex - the part of your brain most critical for learning new information. Creating belonging, therefore, enables learning.

Belonging is explored further later in this module on the Equity in Online Learning Spaces page.

A quick note before we begin.

The following two pages will explore interactions in online learning environments and dive deeper into instructor presence. We'd like to iterate that seeking to recreate the in-person-learning experience online can be problematic. We recommend translating that experience online — not duplicating it — while leveraging the unique experiences and affordances of online educational technologies.

If you're feeling a bit lost or overwhelmed by all this, we recommend reaching out to your instructional designer.

Reflective Pause

Pause for a moment and consider the information mentioned above. Write down your ideas.

What is your experience with social presence in online learning environments either as an instructor or student?
- - What went well? What could improve?
What ideas do you have for creating and maintaining social presence in your course?

References

Fiorella, L., Stull, A. T., Kuhlmann, S., & Mayer, R. E. (2019). Instructor presence in video lectures: The role of dynamic drawings, eye contact, and instructor visibility. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111(7), 1162–1171. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000325

Hammond, Z. (2015). Culturally responsive teaching and the brain: Promoting authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students. Corwin, a SAGE Company.

Jaggars, S. S., & Xu, D. (2016). How do online course design features influence student performance? Computers & Education, 95, 270–284. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2016.01.014