Abstract

Social presence is an important construct in online group learning. It influences the way how social interaction unfolds online and affects learning and social outcomes. However, what precisely social presence is has been under debate, as presently a plethora of different definitions and measures exist preventing the development of a coherent research field regarding social presence and its defining role in online group learning. To solve the issue, we went back to the original social presence theory as devised by the communication researchers Short et al. (1976) to show that although they had a clear idea of social presence—namely “realness” of other persons in the interaction—their definition is ambiguous, not operationalizable, and the measurement of it questionable. We, therefore, disentangled their social presence theory and (1) reformulated the social presence definition to enable an operationalization in line with the previous conceptualization of social presence; (2) departed from the technological determinism of social presence; and (3) identified two other constructs closely linked to social presence, namely, sociability (as a medium attribute) and social space (as a group attribute). By reformulating the definition of social presence and by linking it to social space and sociability, we hope to contribute to a more coherent line of social presence research and to better understand interpersonal communication, group learning, and group dynamics when learning and working together in an online setting.

Highlights

  • Quite a number of educational researchers investigating online distance education consider social presence an important construct in online group learning (OGL)

  • What precisely social presence is has been under debate, as presently a plethora of different definitions and measures exist preventing the development of a coherent research field regarding social presence and its defining role in online group learning

  • We disentangled their social presence theory and (1) reformulated the social presence definition to enable an operationalization in line with the previous conceptualization of social presence; (2) departed from the technological determinism of social presence; and (3) identified two other constructs closely linked to social presence, namely, sociability and social space

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Summary

Introduction

Quite a number of educational researchers investigating online distance education consider social presence an important construct in online group learning (OGL). Group learning refers to the “instructional use of small groups so that students work together to maximize their own and each other’s learning” Success is achieved only when other group members are successful. Research on face-to-face group learning has shown numerous advantages of group learning over competitive (success is only achieved if others fail) or individual learning (success is achieved independent of others). The growing interest in group learning and the application of it in online settings as well in order to create online group learning (Kreijns et al, 2021)

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