In Search of a Better Understanding of Social Presence: An Investigation Into How Researchers Define Social Presence

• In Event: Social Presence in Online Learning: Extending the Research Conversation on Definitions, Learning, Conflict, Identity, and Othering

Abstract

Social presence is a popular construct used to describe and understand how people socially interact in online learning environments. But how people think about, talk about, and research social presence has changed a bit over the years. For instance, social presence began as a quality of a communication medium but was reconceptualized as being more dependent on the behaviors one uses and/or the degree to which one perceives others as being “real” and “there”. We posit that once one takes a closer look at how researchers and online educators talk about social presence, they will see less consensus. This lack of consensus is problematic, because it leads to researchers and practitioners talking about related but different constructs.

To investigate this and to better understand how differently social presence is being defined, we analyzed how researchers defined social presence. The goal of this exploratory study was to better understand just how differently researchers define social presence. To answer these questions, we used Google Scholar to identify the top 50 cited articles on social presence. We then searched each article for how the authors defined social presence.

We found that researchers tended to define social presence either in terms of the behaviors one uses (e.g., immediacy behaviors) and/or the degree to which one perceives another person(s) as being a “real” person (and to a lesser degree, “there”) when using a communication medium. However, about 20% of the time, researchers defined social presence in terms of community (e.g., belonging, connection). While we understand why researchers have done this, we believe that this confuses what social presence is with what it should do in an online course.

Our results also revealed that the CoI, and specifically the work of Garrison, continues to influence social presence research. However, as useful as the CoI and the work of Garrison is for the research and practice of online learning, we contend that it can limit or complicate researchers understanding of social presence. First, the CoI conceptualizes social presence only in terms of its relationship to teaching presence and cognitive presence. Students are social creatures and given time interacting with others will find ways to establish their social presence on their own without the teacher’s help and therefore is not dependent on teaching presence. Further, social presence might not be essential for a meaningful educational experience. The CoI is an idealized model for a certain type of online course (i.e., collaborative online learning environments)--and possibly a certain type of learner. This suggests that the CoI might be of limited value for all of the online courses that rely little, if at all, on collaborative assignments or for students who do not value social interaction.

Moving forward, researchers should first clearly explain how social presence is defined in the literature and then clearly define how they understand social presence. We also believe that it is important to not to confuse social presence with collaboration or community; they are three important, yet different, constructs in the online literature.

Authors

• Patrick R. Lowenthal, Boise State University

• Chareen L. Snelson, Boise State University