Community Through Technology: An Online ESL Instructor Toolkit

Making Connections with Community Building

Drawing on earlier work that investigated community and sense of community in physical spaces, such as neighborhoods, and in relational spaces, such as professional or spiritual communities, McMillan and Chavis (1986) aimed to create a fuller description of sense of community and to identify those factors that play larger and smaller roles in contributing to one’s sense of community. They proposed that a richer definition than those that existed would require four elements: (1) membership, defined as “the feeling of belonging or of sharing a sense of personal relatedness”; (2) influence, defined as “a sense of mattering, of making a difference to a group and of the group mattering to its members”; (3) integration and fulfillment of needs, defined as “the feeling that members’ needs will be met by the resources received through their membership in the group”; and (4) shared emotional connection, defined as “the belief that members have shared and will share history, common places, time together, and similar experiences” (1986, 9). Putting these elements together, the authors proposed this definition:

“Sense of community is a feeling that members have a sense of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that members’ needs will be met through their commitment to be together.” (9)

The attributes that contribute to each of these elements are important considerations in course design, particularly in online learning environments, where the instructor’s course design decisions can have a significant impact on how members feel and how they can connect when participating in the classroom “neighborhood.” McMillan and Chavis outline these major attributes as (1) “boundaries, emotional safety, a sense of belonging and identification, personal investment, and a common symbol system” (membership); (2) when members feel they have influence, they are more drawn to a community, conformity is positively influenced by (and is also an indicator of) degree of cohesiveness, and the influence is bidirectional between community members and the community (influence); (3) reinforcement and meeting members’ needs are key roles of a strong community, “status of membership, success of the community, and competence or capabilities of other members” are all strong community reinforcers (integration and fulfillment of needs); and finally, (4) members are more likely to become close and bond the more they interact with one another and the more positive those interactions are, defined (rather than ambiguous) interaction event endings (closure) and events that are meaningful to the members promote cohesiveness and bonding, and the amount of “interpersonal emotional risk” members take when interacting within the community and shared spiritual or emotional bonds all contribute positively to members’ sense of community (14).

Investigating the specific community setting of an online educational environment, Garrison et al.’s work on the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework put forth that the three key components of instructor presence (course design, facilitation, and guidance), social presence (students’ abilities to project their personalities, ideas, and identities into a trusting online community to connect with others), and cognitive presence (when learners construct knowledge through collaboration and discussion) are all interconnected and interdependent and must all be nurtured to develop deep and meaningful learning (2001). With their CoI model, the authors put forth that “stronger online communities of inquiry exist when interactions allow students to establish their social presence as real people with individual thoughts, feelings, and humor” and that students are “likely to instigate, sustain, and support content-related communication because it becomes more engaging and rewarding,” having a positive impact on student learning (Borup & Graham, 2012, p. 196).

Central to the CoI framework are the basic elements of community, identified by Rovai shortly after Garrison et al.’s work was published as mutual interdependence among members, connectedness, trust, interactivity, and shared values and goals (2002). Rovai noted how “students who possess a strong sense of community are more likely to persist than those who feel isolated and alone,” (2002, 320), underscoring the importance of an instructor’s intentional focus on building opportunities for community in the design of online courses. Research shows that when students feel they belong to a community, they are more highly motivated to learn and participate in the classroom (Gehlbach et al., 2016; Rovai, 2002; Rovai, 2003).

A critical component of this community is the instructor and how they present themselves and communicate with the students. Increased instructor presence has been associated with greater student satisfaction with the learning experience, higher motivation to learn, and increased student confidence in their abilities to learn the class material (Yang et al., 2022). Kim & Kim note that “motivation is widely recognized as a crucial factor in foreign language acquisition” (2024, p. 27), and they found that students who were more highly motivated to learn and more confident in their abilities participated more in the online class, and vice-versa for less motivated students. Thus, students who perhaps could benefit the most by participating were among the least likely to participate, creating a big opening for instructors to increase their presence in constructive ways in the aim of increasing these students’ motivation and confidence in their abilities. One method to use is positive instructor feedback, which the authors found had a significant impact on both participation levels and perceived efficacy of EFL students, with students commenting on how important quick and detailed instructor feedback was in motivating them to participate and study more. In the authors' study, “peer feedback, combined with emotional support from the instructor, played a significant role in fostering and transforming students’ initial perceptions of online interaction.”

These demonstrated relationships between instructor interaction and student motivation, and between instructor interaction and learners’ perceived self-efficacy, tell us how important the instructor’s role is in building community. Shiau and Wright discussed how their experience using gamified apps, collaborative online applications, and incorporating content about student holidays into the curriculum delivered through the course management system when their face-to-face adult ESOL classes moved online contributed to building community and lead to higher student proficiency. As part of their efforts, they created “celebration slides” that included “birthdates, holidays, community resources/events, software usage hours, classroom competitions, and student accomplishments, such as testing gains . . . [that] . . . helped build a more vital sense of community from class to class” (2022, p. 80).

Another critical component of community is student social presence, which, as Pham et al. state, “connects the real and online worlds, putting an online learner in touch with the teacher and other online learners” (2023, p. 24). Short et al. discuss how participants in social interactions that are mediated by technology experience varying degrees of “presence,” both for themselves and for others, depending upon the capabilities of the communications technology being used for the interaction, and thus varying degrees of actually “being” with others, or their perceived physical proximity, when using these technologies (1976). How individuals interact in the online environment, including the tools they use, impacts that sense of “being” with others, or the degree of closeness felt. Short et al.'s social presence theory is founded on Argyle and Dean’s (1965) notion of intimacy, which looked at the influencing factors of eye contact, physical distance, and smiling, and Wiener and Mehrabian’s (1968) study of immediacy, which Short et al. describe as “the psychological distance which a communicator puts between himself and the object of his communication, his addressee or his communication” (72), and to which Wiener and Mehrabian connect nonverbal behaviors, such as eye contact, hand gestures, and other body movements, that communicate to the other person a relationship of familiarity and closeness. According to Social Presence Theory, communication mediums that offer more opportunities to create intimacy and immediacy, with face-to-face communication being the most effective, generate higher levels of social presence. Relatedly, Media Richness Theory, rather than looking at how well the individual perceives the presence of others when communicating via a certain medium, looks instead at how capable the medium itself is in communicating complex cues or messages and considers a medium more rich than another when it has more of an ability to communicate ambiguity, nuance, tone, and focus through nonverbal cues such as body language and tone of voice. Combining the two in a simplified manner, Social Presence Theory states that “richer” media provide an opportunity for higher levels of social presence, and Media Richness Theory states media that provide for more social cues are best for complex messages.

This short video from Owen Guthrie of the University of Alaska Fairbanks offers a great way to introduce your students to the evidence-based importance of their social presence in the online classroom. I think the second part of the video, which talks about Dewey's concept of practical inquiry, would be best suited for education students, so I would use only the first part of the video for my ESL classes.

UAF Center for Teaching and Learning. (2016, August 26). Community of Inquiry. YouTube [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPAybysg0Gk

Borup et al. theorized that emerging (at the time) video technologies could be used to more readily support the Community of Inquiry detailed by Garrison et al. than could the text-based communications available a decade earlier when the CoI was developed. The authors look specifically into the teacher and instructor presence aspects of the CoI to investigate the impact asynchronous video communications can have on students’ perception of the instructor’s, their own, and their peers’ social presence. In a study involving 18 students from three predominantly online sections of an educational technology course taught by different instructors, the authors conducted semi-structured interviews to gather student perceptions of social presence in relation to video communications. In the classes, different teachers used video tools in different ways: one instructor had a weekly video voice thread discussion post where students were encouraged to respond via video; another used a video voice thread to provide feedback on assignments and also to facilitate small group interactions, and another posted weekly 5-8 minute unit orientation YouTube videos that included questions to get student thinking about the content, with students required to reply with 30-60 second videos. The data gathered from the interviews showed the video communication “had a substantial impact on establishing the instructors' social presence,” with a majority of students indicating the video made their instructors seem more real and present, that viewing their peers' video comments helped them to see those peers as real people with emotions, and that they could express themselves more naturally with video. These findings support the premises of Social Presence Theory and Media Richness Theory. However, several students cited disadvantages to using asynchronous video to communicate with their peers, with the one the authors highlighted as surfacing most frequently being the feeling that peers were not viewing students’ video comments, which had a negative impact on “students' emotional expressions and group cohesion.” These findings underscore again the importance of feedback, either formal feedback from the instructor or the informal conversational feedback we receive from people we are speaking with in casual conversations, and also brings to the surface the notion of feeling heard, which we will look into in more depth with Rovai and DiGiacomo et al. Taken together, these findings highlight an important consideration for course design in terms of creating those opportunities for feedback and reactions to students’ contributions to the community, both formal and informal.

Social networking platforms have been investigated for their potential to benefit student engagement, interaction, and learning. These platforms offer students and instructors ease of ability to share information, interact, and collaborate across time and space. In addition, in terms of both media richness and the ability to present one’s own personality and identity into their communications on the site, social networking sites, even those that are primarily text-based, can be on the richer end of the spectrum due to the informal, casual nature of the communications that typically take place on them and the user’s ability to convey cues that add precision to their text-based communications with emojis, gifs, and images; additionally, most social media sites allow for transmission of video, an even richer medium. All these advantages make social media platforms seem like logical technological communication media to consider for increasing students’ social presence and their opportunities for bonding with other participants and creating shared experiences. Studies have shown potential for a positive impact on student performance but also some potential pitfalls to be aware of. Estrella (2023) conducted a literature review of several studies that each used one of Facebook, WhatsApp, or YouTube as integrated parts of the classes investigated. Researching impact on student achievement, the studies’ findings ranged from finding no impact to finding a “significant increase” of student performance. In his own study of 116 English as a foreign language (EFL) undergraduates in Ecuador, the author investigated the usefulness of social networking sites in an EFL class, asking the research questions: How can social networking sites (SNS) be leveraged to boost student performance, what types of engagement and interaction provide the most benefit, and how much cooperative learning using SNS can increase academic performance? In the survey instrument aimed at collecting students’ perceptions of SNS and their usefulness in educational settings, most students (70-80 percent) indicated they believed using SNS in class can lead to increased and improved interactions with their classmates and that SNS are an effective way to share information to and from the teacher (60-70 percent). The students’ “general perception [was] that using SNS in English class helped them to improve their academic performance” (108). While there are potential negatives the author notes, such as privacy concerns and the potential for social networking sites to make individuals feel isolated rather than connected, with careful design that is centered around cooperative learning, SNS' incorporation into classroom activities can boost student motivation and likely student presence, serving to strengthen the classroom community and student achievement.

Berry (2019) highlighted research that “identified several strategies to increase social presence, including incorporating welcoming messages at the start of a course, encouraging the use of humor, developing profiles to share information about individuals, and using emoticons to express emotion” (181). The findings of the impact these strategies can have on students' social presence suggests that the power to increase social presence does not rest solely within the medium itself, but also with the individual using the medium and how they decide to employ it, which supports Borup et al.’s findings.

Gunawardena & Zittle (1997) developed the 14-question Social Presence Scale, designed to measure the concept of immediacy as an indicator of social presence. The authors used the scale to measure whether participant’s perception of social presence is a predictor of student satisfaction in a text-based online environment. Results indicated that social presence might be a “very strong predictor” of student satisfaction. While the scale has since been found to have high degrees of validity and reliability, the authors’ study itself was conducted with participants of a GlobalEd computer conference and not in a traditional classroom setting, so the applications of the data may be limited.

In 2009, Garrison defined social presence as “the ability of participants to identify with the community (e.g., course of study), communicate purposefully in a trusting environment, and develop interpersonal relationships by way of projecting their individual personalities” (352). Garrison further noted Roger & Lea’s 2005 work showing that text-based communications in an online setting did not have a big negative impact on social presence, thus moving away from Short et al.’s theory that the degree of social presence possible is a quality inherent to the communication medium.

Kreijins, et al. (2022) investigated social presence in terms of its impact on online group learning (OGL), where small groups work together collaboratively to enhance knowledge construction, and noted that, in a meta study by Johnson and Johnson (2014) of 685 individual studies, small groups of students working together to achieve common goals “led to more higher-level reasoning, more frequent generation of new ideas and solutions (i.e., process gain), and transfer from group performance to individual performance (i.e., group-to-individual transfer)” (140). Recognizing the important impact of social presence, Kreijins et al. put forth that the existing definitions of social presence are ambiguous and that “a plethora of different definitions of social presence and incompatible measures for assessing it exist” (140), and thus set out to make a more operational definition. To begin, they challenge Short et al.’s technological determinism view wherein the technology alone determines the degree of social presence, introducing individual and social factors as playing important roles in creating social presence. While the authors state that Short et al. “had a clear view of what social presence was” (155) in identifying the degree to which a participant identifies with the other person as real (“realness”), they also put forth that the measurement instrument they developed did not assess perception of realness but rather attitude towards the communication medium in question. To create a more complete and representative model, the authors maintain the social presence component of Short et al.’s model (degree of “realness”) and add sociability, which they define as the capacity of the technology being used to allow for (1) “the expression of social presence and the experience of it” and “the emergence of a social space,” or social affordances, and (2) social space, meaning the “interpersonal and emotional connections between group members” (142). Key to a social space conducive to communication and collaboration is mutual trust, “needed because group members will not participate collaboratively if they do not know with whom they are communicating” (160). Distinguishing among these three constructs of social presence, social space, and sociability, the authors state, will help create a more robust understanding of how these components are interrelated and the resultant impact on OGL.

This podcast from the Mayo Clinic explores what makes a strong online community for learners and strategies to foster one.

Craft. S. (Host). (2023). Why Can’t We Be Friends? Building Community in Online Courses. [Audio podcast episode]. In Mayo Clinic's Educator's Central. Mayo Clinic Educator's Central. https://mayocliniceducatorscentral.blubrry.net/2021/07/21/live-why-cant-we-be-friends-building-community-in-online-courses/

Podcast - Creating Community.mp3

Why Can't We Be Friends? Building Community in Online Courses

In their investigation into undergraduates’ perception of social presence in the online classroom, Pham et al. reported that students may have a hard time connecting in the online environment without interpersonal communications and social context and that creating meaningful relationships and sense of belonging is hampered due to these factors (2023). Since social presence is a central component of a sense of community, the authors put forth that instructors must proactively create an online experience that helps students feel connected to other students and to the instructor, which can be accomplished by, as Kim & Kim also found, providing timely feedback and support and encouraging discussion among students. Timely and in-depth feedback from the instructor tells the student not only that the instructor is engaged but also that the student’s voice matters and has meaning within the community. Feeling connected to and valued by others in this way forms the basis of the relationships that make up any community. Rovai also notes the importance of an assignment or task’s connection to a students’ grade or assessment, stating, “adult students expect to earn credit for engaging in an activity that requires the expenditure of time and effort on their part. Without motivation to engage in discussions, they are less likely to take the time to contribute to discussions” (2003, 103). The author found that online courses where instructors provided feedback in discussions and where students posted at least three times per week had significantly higher senses of community than students in the same courses where instructors did not provide feedback on discussion posts. DiGiacomo et al. noted how this notion of “feeling heard,” which they define as “the feeling that one’s communication is received with attention, empathy, respect, and in a spirit of mutual understanding,” is central to healthy and strong relationships and to self-development (2023, p. 11).

Yang et al. reported that social presence is a psychological state that scholars have demonstrated “occurs when people perceive the existence of other people as interactive actors and agents in online communication activities” (2022, p. 1). The authors also made the important observation that increased social presence makes communication clearer, which enables students to allocate less cognitive load towards understanding peer and instructor messages, affording them more working memory available to use for understanding course content. This is a particularly relevant observation to ESL instruction, where stress on cognitive functioning is high due to students’ demand to understand both language and content.

Richardson and Swan (2003) also found that overall perceived learning was predicted by both perceived social presence in the online course and satisfaction with the instructor. Using a modified version of Gunawardena & Zittle’s social presence scale, the authors surveyed 369 (non-traditional) undergraduate students, from freshman to seniors and with age ranges from 19 to 63, who had completed one or more of Empire State College’s online learning courses. Results led the authors to conclude that online classes should “incorporate the social aspects of learning in both the design and instruction of [the] courses” (81).

Key to Garrison et al.’s sense of community is a sense of belonging to the community. Garza et al. (2021) define sense of belonging as students’ perceived social support from the college, feelings of connectedness, and sense of being a valued, accepted, and respected member of the class, and they note how a greater sense of belonging can have a positive impact on persistence. In their own study, the authors found that sense of belonging had “significant and positive” effects on English language learners’ persistence, and that socioacademic integrative moments “had significant and positive direct effects on ELLs’ sense of belonging” (42). Promoting a greater sense of belonging for students in the classroom can begin before instructors even see students for the first time, with the syllabus. Pacansky-Brock (2014) introduced the concept of a liquid syllabus, one not confined by the fixed parameters of a PDF and not locked behind a CMS only to be seen when the course opens up and only to registered students on the first day of classes, but one instead available on the open web for students to explore to inform their decisions of whether or not a course is right for them, one that communicates much more visually to students, as they are accustomed to on the web, one that allows for interaction, and one where richer media such as recorded video allow the instructor to set a welcoming tone for the course that promotes students’ sense of belonging in the course before the course even begins. Murphy-Bowne (2023) expands upon this discussion by stating that the rigid structure of a traditional syllabus and its focus on “rules” and policies can actually discourage a sense of welcome, support, and belonging. A liquid syllabus, with its use of images, videos, and other graphics and formatting, can create a much more welcoming first impression, setting the stage for more positive interactions and relationships between the instructor and students. Arguing in support of a liquid syllabus, Murphy-Bowne discusses how an instructor can use this syllabus format to foster relatedness, one of the three requirements for learner motivation and engagement (the other two being autonomy and competence) in Self Determination Theory, and to contribute to Universal Design for Learning’s (UDL) goal of “creating a variety of learning experiences that engage students in different ways to meet the needs of a diverse learning community” (3), highlighting that a liquid syllabus fosters transparency, equity, inclusion, and community. The author notes one challenge is the time commitment it can take to create a liquid syllabus, but also points out that technologies and platforms are available to lessen the impact of this challenge.

Harnish & Bridges (2011) also underscore the importance of the syllabus as a critical tool for setting those important first impressions of both the course and the instructor in their investigation into the impact a syllabus’ tone has on student perceptions of both. In the study, the authors created two syllabi for the same instructor and course, one written in a friendly and welcoming tone, and the other written in a cold tone, and provided the syllabi to 172 undergraduate students who were not taking the course but were told they were participating in an assessment of a potential teaching candidate. To create the positive/friendly syllabus, the authors used warm language, rationale for assignments, personal experiences, humor, compassion, and enthusiasm for the course. The unfriendly version was created using cold language and an unfriendly approach. Each student was given one of the two syllabi and was told the instructor would do a teaching presentation, but then some were told the instructor could not make it, so their evaluation had to be solely on the syllabus, and the rest were provided a video lecture in lieu of the in-person presentation, which the students then watched. Students answered a series of Likert-scale questions related to approachability, perceived motivation to teach, perceived course difficulty, and warmth & coldness. Results showed that those students who read the “cold” syllabus rated the instructor as significantly colder than those who read the “warm” syllabus, and vice-versa for the warm syllabus, with the warm syllabus readers rating the instructor more approachable and more highly motivated to teach, and also perceiving the course as easier. This latter may have surfaced a warning of caution in how friendly an instructor wants to be, as it is possible this perception arose from a demonstrated inverse correlation in previous literature between friendliness and perceived competence, meaning it is possible the students saw the friendly syllabus instructor as less competent. Also of note is that the students who watched the video rated the instructor as less favorable, bringing into question how much of a lasting impact the syllabus can have on student perceptions. An important observation the authors point out is that in the past, students typically met the instructor on the first day of class, and the instructor then handed them a syllabus, whereas today many students see the syllabus before they meet the instructor (or in some classes see the syllabus and then never actually see the instructor), which gives the syllabus more potential power to shape, at least initially, student perceptions.

A discussion of community building in the classroom is incomplete without discussing culturally responsive teaching practices, which have been shown to have a positive impact on students’ sense of belonging and community. English (2023) noted how instructors can build community and boost student achievement by incorporating strategies to bring diverse perspectives into the class materials, activities, and course design, creating a learning community where all students feel their cultures and identities are valued. Phuntsog (1998) noted how, by sharing information about their home cultures, students can increase their sense of belonging and self-worth in the classroom and provide the instructor with knowledge that can be used to help students connect new knowledge with their existing knowledge. This sharing of information also helps to build familiarity and connections among the students and the instructor, which makes the relationships closer, helping to further build community.

Circling back to Garrison et al.’s domain of social presence, expressing oneself authentically in the classroom is key to this domain, and central to being able to express oneself authentically is to use one’s native dialect (Thompson, 2022; Young et al., 2014), with which each student forges their relationship with the world and with the knowledge they acquire. As such, the community will benefit when students’ native languages are recognized in the classroom as a valued asset. As Thompson notes, “it is important for colleges to create an environment in which ESL students feel proud of their ability to use two languages, a place where ESL students feel comfortable interacting with classmates and professors” (2022, p.26). In addition to the community building benefits of using one’s native language, all learning, as Hammond noted, is built upon prior knowledge and so, as Kerr reflected, “the most significant resource that learners can bring to the language learning task is their existing linguistic knowledge—a substantial portion of which consists of knowledge about their own language” (p.4).

A final note to consider is that, with so many colleges and universities offering classes with compressed timelines, from the fairly common six- and seven-week courses, and the longer but still compressed 12-week courses, to the less common four-week sessions over winter break, the growing number of instructors teaching these courses may worry that there is not enough time to build community in these compressed settings. Lowenthal & Trespalacios (2022) investigated this topic by looking into perceptions of classroom community among students enrolled in six sections—some 7-weeks and some 15-weeks—of the same course taught by the same instructor in a fully online Master’s of Educational Technology program. The authors found no statistically significant difference in students’ perception of classroom community between the traditional and accelerated classes; however, students actually rated the accelerated course slightly higher in terms of connectedness and community. One potential reason the authors surmised was that “accelerated courses could . . . encourage/require instructors and students to dedicate more time to the course that in turn could help speed up the building blocks for a sense of classroom community to emerge” (68). This suggests that an instructor investing more time in developing community early in the semester—intentionally front-loading the course with a lot of community building efforts—could foster community more quickly. Another point to note from this study is that, while the study had a small sample size and a very specific student population of graduate students in education, so the findings may not apply to all settings, the surveys revealed that students’ interest in building community varied depending on their personal circumstances and course demands, with some students stating feeling a sense of community or belonging to a sense of community was not that important to them. While this population of online education graduate students was likely very independent and self-directed, this finding does suggest that perhaps not all students in an online ESL class want to be part of a community, so it is important to make those opportunities available, but not to force it.