Abstract
Research has demonstrated that social presence not only affects outcomes but also student, and possibly instructor, satisfaction with a course. Teacher immediacy behaviors and the presence of others are especially important issues for those involved in delivering online education. This study explored the role of social presence in online learning environments and its relationship to students’ perceptions of learning and satisfaction with the instructor. The participants for this study were students who completed Empire State College’s (ESC) online learning courses in the spring of 2000 and completed the end of semester course survey (n=97). A correlational design was utilized. This study found that students with high overall perceptions of social presence also scored high in terms of perceived learning and perceived satisfaction with the instructor. Students’ perceptions of social presence overall, moreover, contributed significantly to the predictor equation for students’ perceived learning overall. Gender accounted for some of the variability of students’ overall perception of social presence, while age and number of college credits earned did not account for any of the variability.
Highlights
The educational community is finding itself on the edge of a new era of online learning
Online learning has been defined as any class that offers at least part of its curriculum in the online course delivery mode, or as a transmission of information and/or communication via the Internet without instructors and students being connected at the same [2]
Fifty-nine percent of the survey participants indicated interaction, feedback, and other students’ perspectives and/or acknowledgement as their reasons for selecting the activities they did as being the most beneficial to their learning. These findings indicate that social presence permeates the activities generally designated as social activities and those activities usually designated as individual activities
Summary
The educational community is finding itself on the edge of a new era of online learning. Research in the area of online learning has demonstrated that the advantages offered by this environment are many [4, 5, 6, 7]; especially the convenience and flexibility offered by the “anytime, anywhere” accessibility [8, 9, 10, 3, 11, 12] This catch phrase, widely used by institutions publicizing their online courses, means that students have access to courses and course materials 24 hours a day (time independent), regardless of location (place-independent), making them far more convenient than the traditional educational experience [5, 8, 11, 12]. With the option of multiple representations of a concept embedded in an online course, students can store and retrieve information more effectively [13, 15]
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