Lesson 6

Lesson 6: Social Presence & Assessment

Goals

• Discuss and describe the research dealing with social presence in distance learning.

• Identify factors important to online social presence.

• Discuss the assessment of distance education.

• Research and discuss the strategies of the assessments of research in distance education.

• Emerging Topics:MOOCs, Learning Analytics

Instructor's Notes

Social Presence

In this lesson we will discuss online social presence, and assessment in distance education. We have covered some aspects in social presence previously. It is important for us to spend a little bit more time to research social presence because it has been overlooked by many practitioners and researchers.

Social presence is important in online learning. Social presence becomes critical because physical presence is lacking in the online learning environment, . Social presence is the degree of feeling of, perception of and reaction to being connected by CMC to another intellectual entity through a text-based encounter. Gunawardena and Zittle's and Tu and McIsaac's studies are important to the understanding of social presence.

The importance of examining social factors that impact communication and learning in telecommunications-based systems has been emphasized in recent studies. Virtual classrooms with multicultural students are pervasive. Studies have suggested that future research should explore the relationship between media and the socio-cultural construction of knowledge, and examine the cultural effects of technology and courseware transfer in distance education. Social presence is the degree of person-to-person awareness that occurs in the computer environment. Social presence, the most important concept in social context, is an important key to understanding person-to-person telecommunication. Recent studies have emphasized that social presence possesses potential for future study. Social presence is necessary to enhance and improve effective instruction in both traditional and technology-based classrooms. When the level of social presence is low, interaction is also low. The lack of social presence will lead to a high level of frustration, an attitude critical of the instructor's effectiveness, and a lower level of affective learning.

Social presence is a significant factor in improving instructional effectiveness; therefore, it is one of the most significant factors in distance education. Studies that have investigated the effects of conveyance system design and social presence, in the form of teacher immediacy behavior on perceived student learning and satisfaction in the televised classroom, concluded that system design and teacher immediacy behavior have a strong impact on student learning and satisfaction. Social presence is a strong predictor of satisfaction within a CMC environment. Also, it is considered to be an element of interpersonal communication in an online learning environment. In fact, an examination of the utilization of e-mail by college student concluded that students used CMC more when they felt that e-mail conveyed more interpersonal presence. The user judges the degree of social presence. Lack of non-verbal cues in CMC causes an impersonal feeling, doubted to be inherent to the system. Online users have perceived CMC as a high social presence medium. Social presence can be cultured by teleconference users and leaders or encouraged by initial learning sessions. It is suggested that by successfully inculturating themselves within CMC, learners promote their levels of social presence, and allow themselves an opportunity for greater participation. In spite of the characteristics of the medium, student perceptions of the social and human qualities of CMC will depend on the social presence created by the instructors/moderators and the online community. Therefore the instructor or the moderator must utilize their interaction skills and techniques, rather than that of the medium; this will enhance students' perceptions of social presence on CMC.

How can we assess learning in distance education? This is a tough question. Many different methods of assessing distance learning have been proposed. One question I was asked frequently, how do you know the actual enrolled students are participating the course activities? How do you students are not cheating in online classes? I would like to ask you the same questions. Because you may be asked the similar questions. The assessments and evaluations are very critical issues in distance education. How do we know our students are learning? Should we give exams to distance learners? How do we know the right students taking the exams, not others? When processing the readings, keep one thing in mind. Assessments and evaluations are related to the distance course designs and learning objectives.

Let's identify effective distance education assessments and justify why they are effective.

MOOCs? What is it? MOOC is an emerging learning paradigm. Educators are still trying to understand what it is, what role it play in education, and how we should examine this new learning paradigm. If you are not familiar with MOOC, be sure to read more about it since in this lesson we are examining different ONLEs.

Source: Source: What is MOOC? from YouTube by Dave Cormier

Readings (Powered by Del.icio.us. Consider to subscribe RSS to keep updated on reading resources.)

• • Required Readings (Finish the required readings before the lesson starts)

  • Optional Readings (More readings for you to enrich your learning, to prepare for discussions, assignments, projects etc.)

  • Resources (Resources from our classmates, ETC students, and ETC faculty.)

Activities

Lesson Discussions (4 points) Lesson Discussion Guidelines

Assignment

Prepare upcoming assignments

For Due Dates: See Assignment Page

• • Assignment 3: Web 2.0 Learning Environments (Due Lesson 7)

  • Assignment 4: Final Paper Proposal

  • Assignment 5: Final Paper (See Lesson 7 for the instructions)