Documentation:Creating the Online Learning Environment/Creating Social Presence

Creating Social Presence

Online facilitators and instructors play important ‘social’ roles that are critical to the development of an effective learning environment:

1. They must help learners create their individual ‘social presence’ in the online classroom, so that they participate as ‘real people’ in engaged collaborative discourse with peers – allowing learners to perceive themselves as a learning community.
2. They must facilitate creation of, and sustain, the social context of learning – nothing less than the ‘culture’ of the course!

Creating Online Selves

The presentation and sharing of one's individual identity is intimately connected to the development of community or ‘sense of community.' Communities are not made up of homogeneous anonymous beings between whom communication and interaction ‘happens.' Rather, they are a heterogeneous mixture of individuals who may or may not share common values, worldviews, or perspectives.

Developing a sense of community demands that individuals come to know each other, and learn about their similarities and differences. Some educational researchers use the notion of transactional distance as a measure of learners' sense of community:

Transactional distance is the cognitive space between learning peers, teachers and content in a distance education setting. Coined by Michael G. Moore in 1980, transactional distance is a function of dialog and structure in distributed adult learning settings. Distance decreases with dialog and increases with structure so that a classroom with high interaction and less rigid format will be more engaging to learners. Wikipedia, 2007

Creating an online ‘self’ is a challenge, however, because we are very used to relying on material elements to give clues about our identity or at least to motivate curiosity, interest, and introductions: skin colour, complexion, body type, clothing and style, jewelery and other adornments, to name but a few. Our body language can also give clues about our character and about our comfort level in an educational setting: Casual or stiff? Bored or alert? Formal or informal? Shy or confident? Moreover, in interpersonal encounters, an individual’s authenticity – a term that in English connotes ‘truth’ and ‘accuracy of (self)representation’ and ‘trustworthiness’ – is supposed to be guaranteed by physical presence and the evidence of the senses.

But as we know, in the text-based communications of a virtual learning environment, bodily markers of identity such as physical attributes and vocal accent, are often invisible and bodily participation in gesture and ritual is usually impossible. The physical body is, in effect, “banned from the Internet."

Yet, study after study has shown that over time participating in online courses, learners’ sense of community increases, and their feeling of transactional distance decreases. For example, Chen’s (2001) quantitative study of adult learners in a web-based course demonstrated that 'extent of interaction' and 'skill level with the Internet' were the only two significant factors influencing learners’ perception of transactional distance.

In other words, it takes time and practice to ‘incorporate’ yourself online: to learn new ways of presenting your own identity, and of ‘getting to know’ others.

Advice from UBC’s Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology

The online education experts at UBC’s Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology offer the following advice to online instructors and facilitators for creating their own ‘presence’ online:

The establishing of instructor presence is a process. The process may begin with some sharing of information about:

• You and your background.
• Your expectation for interaction with learners.
• Your style of teaching within the context of this course.

Some first steps in the process are:

• The development of a biography – describing your background, interest in the course material, and (perhaps) something about you and your life which you may want your learners to know about.
• Your first contact with learners (via telephone, email and/or posting within the course website). This should be welcoming, an opportunity for students to seek clarification from you regarding course requirements or content and a chance for you to impart something about who you are and opening the door for communication so that you can get a sense of who they are.

In addition, if you intend to communicate regularly with students online, you will want to consider:

• Regular posting of announcements. This gives students guidance and keeps them on track.
• Letting students know your online teaching style; whether you will be posting every day or weekly; whether you will respond to each post or only those where clarification, guidance, or comment is required.

Please refer to the Introducing Yourself to Learners section of the CTLT website for more information.