Raising Student Social Presence in Online Classes

Distance and online education is increasing in importance in the offerings of many universities. As this occurs, instructors are developing ways to use new media to support traditional teaching practices. This is an important effort, as online education is still viewed with a degree of skepticism by some. By successfully transferring accepted teaching practice into online education, instructors are helping to demonstrate that online education can be of high quality. Some instructors are also developing different teaching practices to take advantage of the new media. This too .is important, because the technologies of online education may support learning strategies that are not feasible in traditional teaching modes. A subject of importance in both efforts is that of student social presence. Social presence, or the perceived saliency of members of the online group, may be important to the satisfaction of students in online classes. This paper explores issues relating to social presence in online classes and suggests ways to increase student social presence in online classes. The relative richness of seven media types (face-to-face, video conferencing, synchronous audio, text-based chat, e-mail, asynchronous audio, and threaded discussion) is ranked according to four criteria (feedback, multiple cues, message . tailoring, and emotions). (Contains 17 references.) (Author/MES) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY