Social presence in online learning communities: the role of personal profiles

Online communication is increasingly used in education, but it is not without problems. One significant difficulty is a lack of social presence. Social presence relates to the need for users of technology-based communication to perceive each other as real people. Low social presence can be a particular issue in text-based, asynchronous systems such as discussion forums, leading to feelings of impersonality and disengagement from online learning. Features of online communication systems have the potential to increase social presence. One possibility, advocated in the literature on online learning, is the use of personal profiles and photos to help participants to learn something about each other and feel more connected. This paper discusses the question: To what extent do personal profiles enhance social presence in online learning communities? It presents research findings from two studies which investigated learners’ use and perceptions of personal profiles in online forums. The findings suggest that personal profiles and photos help some online learners to feel in touch with each other. Other learners, however, do not feel the need for these facilities, have privacy concerns or prefer to focus on the forum postings. Keywords:  personal profile; online community; learning community; social presence; distance learning (Published: 7 August 2014) Citation : Research in Learning Technology 2014,  22 : 19710 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v22.19710

[1]  Richard L. Daft,et al.  Organizational information requirements, media richness and structural design , 1986 .

[2]  Cliff Lampe,et al.  The Benefits of Facebook "Friends: " Social Capital and College Students' Use of Online Social Network Sites , 2007, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[3]  S. Cobb,et al.  Social Presence and Online Learning: A Current View from a Research Perspective. , 2009 .

[4]  Benjamin Kehrwald,et al.  Being Online: Social Presence as Subjectivity in Online Learning. , 2010 .

[5]  Sara Kiesler,et al.  Social psychological aspects of computer-mediated communication , 1984 .

[6]  Karen Swan,et al.  Building Learning Communities in Online Courses: the importance of interaction , 2002 .

[7]  Katherine Karl,et al.  Examining Students’ Intended Image on Facebook: “What Were They Thinking?!” , 2009 .

[8]  D. Nicol,et al.  The social dimensions of online learning , 2003 .

[9]  Ulrike Cress,et al.  Ambivalent effect of member portraits in virtual groups , 2005, J. Comput. Assist. Learn..

[10]  Karen Kear,et al.  Social presence in online learning communities , 2010 .

[11]  Jungjoo Kim,et al.  Investigating factors that influence social presence and learning outcomes in distance higher education , 2011, Comput. Educ..

[12]  Baiyun Chen,et al.  Students' self-presentation on Facebook: An examination of personality and self-construal factors , 2012, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[13]  John Short,et al.  The social psychology of telecommunications , 1976 .

[14]  C. Gunawardena,et al.  Social presence as a predictor of satisfaction within a computer‐mediated conferencing environment , 1997 .

[15]  Matthew Lombard,et al.  At the Heart of It All: The Concept of Presence , 2006 .

[16]  Yu-Chein Chen,et al.  Building an Online Learning Community. , 2004 .

[17]  Gustavo S. Mesch,et al.  Are Norms of Disclosure of Online and Offline Personal Information Associated with the Disclosure of Personal Information Online , 2010 .

[18]  S. Barab,et al.  Designing System Dualities: Characterizing a Web-Supported Professional Development Community , 2003 .

[19]  Rena M. Palloff,et al.  Book Review: Building online learning communities: Effective strategies for the virtual classroom , 2007 .

[20]  Karen Kear,et al.  What do learners want from computer mediated communication systems , 2003 .

[21]  Jenny Preece,et al.  Online Communities: Designing Usability and Supporting Sociability , 2000 .

[22]  Tom Postmes,et al.  Two faces of anonymity: Paradoxical effects of cues to identity in CMC , 2007, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[23]  T. Paulus,et al.  Using a social networking site for experiential learning: Appropriating, lurking, modeling and community building , 2010, Internet High. Educ..

[24]  D. Garrison.  E-Learning in the 21st Century , 2016 .

[25]  Karen Kear.  Investigating design features of a computer-mediated communication system , 2007 .

[26]  John W. Creswell,et al.  Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches , 2010 .

[27]  Jennifer Preece,et al.  Sociability and usability in online communities: Determining and measuring success , 2001, Behav. Inf. Technol..

[28]  Cliff Lampe,et al.  A familiar face(book): profile elements as signals in an online social network , 2007, CHI.

[29]  Danah Boyd,et al.  Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship , 2007, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[30]  Francis Brouns,et al.  Personal profiles: enhancing social interaction in learning networks , 2011, Int. J. Web Based Communities.

[31]  Marko Čupić,et al.  Online communities – Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability , 2003 .

[32]  Rena M. Palloff,et al.  Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: Effective Strategies for the Online Classroom. Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series. , 1999 .

[33]  D. Randy Garrison,et al.  Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education , 1999, Internet High. Educ..

[34]  Karen Kear.  Online and Social Networking Communities: A Best Practice Guide for Educators , 2010 .

[35]  Caroline Haythornthwaite,et al.  Community Development Among Distance Learners: Temporal and Technological Dimensions , 2006, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[36]  Jonathan Grudin,et al.  When social networks cross boundaries: a case study of workplace use of facebook and linkedin , 2009, GROUP.