Online Social Presence “OSP” Patterns Correlation with Students’ Academic Performance among Master of Education Program Students

Abstract

More social presence in online learning environment was seen to be one of the important predictors of students' academic performance. However, patterns of students' Online Social Presence (OSP) when using social networking tools for learning has not been widely discussed in previous studies. Therefore, this study was aimed to investigate the patterns of students' OSP. Moreover, this study aimed to find which patterns of students' OPS that correlated to their Academic Performance (AP). The investigated patterns of OSP are Social Respect (SR), Social Sharing (SS), Open Mind (OM), Social Identity (SI) and Intimacy (I). The quantitative methods of data collection and data analysis were used in this study. The data were collected from 65 students in one of Malaysian Public Universities. OSP Questionnaire (OSPQ) was adopted to collect the required data. The data were analyzed using SPSS software to find mean, standard deviation for each pattern of students' OSP. Moreover, Pearson's Correlation Coefficient was used to analyze the correlation between each pattern of students' OSP and AP. The findings of this study showed that all patterns of OSP were highly perceived by the respondents of the study. Moreover, Pearson's Correlation Coefficient outcome showed high and significant correlation between SR, SS, OM and SI with students' AP while the correlation between Intimacy and AP was low.