Do social features help in video-centric online learning platforms? A social presence perspective
Introduction
As technology continues to advance, so too does the landscape of the education system, with the traditional classroom frequently being replaced with online learning environments. In fact, distance education enrollment has been steadily increasing over the years, with the percentage of U.S. college students who are enrolled in at least one distance education course rising from 25.9% in 2012 to 31.6% in 2016 (Seaman, Allen, & Seaman, 2018). This increase in online learning has grown exponentially in recent months due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, with an unprecedented number of primary, secondary, and postsecondary courses being swiftly transformed from a traditional to an online format in order to reduce physical contact (Burke, 2020; Goldstein, 2020). Such an abrupt transition to online learning has led to several challenges for instructors and students alike. In fact, a recent survey conducted by Barnes & Noble College Insights surveyed 432 college students across the United States about their expectations for moving from traditional classrooms to online courses in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The majority of respondents noted various concerns about the transition. For instance, 64% of respondents cited concerns about remaining focused and disciplined in an online format, and 55% reported concerns that they would be negatively impacted by lack of social interaction in the online learning environment (Brown, 2020). Accordingly, is it arguably more important now than ever to empirically assess and understand how to effectively optimize and enhance the online learning experience.
Within the existing online learning literature, there is a general consensus that social presence, or the ability to perceive others in a mediated environment (Richardson, Maeda, Lv, & Caskurlu, 2017), is an important factor to cultivate within the online classroom. In fact, social presence has been consistently linked to numerous positive outcomes. For instance, recent meta-analytic evidence from Richardson et al. (2017) shows that when online students perceive greater social presence within their online classrooms, they experience greater satisfaction (ρ = 0.56) and perceived learning (ρ = 0.51). Other research has shown that social presence fosters intentions to take future online courses (Reio & Crim, 2013), persistence (e.g., Berger & Milem, 1999), motivation to participate (e.g., Mazzolini & Maddison, 2007; Swan & Shih, 2005), and student performance (e.g., Hughes, Luo, Kwok, & Loyd, 2008). These findings have major implications for large scale online learning environments where instructors are searching for tangible ways to maximize and enhance the online learning experience.
The aforementioned literature highlights the need for educators to understand how to optimize opportunities for social presence within the online classroom. As a result, a number of researchers have investigated ways to increase social presence perceptions in an online learning context. Much of this research has focused upon increasing social presence through the utilization of features such as the use of personal profiles (Kear, Chetwynd, & Jefferis, 2014), text messages (DuVall, Powell, Hodge, & Ellis, 2007), individualized video feedback (Lowenthal & Dunlap, 2011), and one-on-one email communication (Dunlap & Lowenthal, 2010). While insights gained from this previous research is informative, existing work focuses almost exclusively upon ways to enhance instructor social presence, and does not consider ways to increase social presence among users. Further, existing research caters to online classroom environments that allow for individualized and small-group interactions among students and teachers. However, many online learning environments cannot feasibly incorporate one-on-one or small group interactions. As a result, many online instructors rely primarily upon video to disseminate class content (Guo & Reinecke, 2014), and therefore have limited means to establish social presence, especially among users. Therefore, it is important to consider how to leverage social presence in such video-centric online environments, where personal, one-on-one communications or small group work are not feasible.
Additionally, we have yet to understand the boundary conditions for the impact of social presence on learning outcomes. Specifically, there is a dearth of research that investigates whether social presence benefits some students more so than others. This is an area that is worthy of investigation, because in order to truly understand the impact of social presence on the learners’ experience, it is imperative to know which individuals gain the most from social presence. As noted by Lowenthal & Mulder, 2017, “… people perceive social presence differently and each person has different social presence needs. Therefore, one strategy might not work equally for all learners” (p. 40). Taking this individualized approach into consideration, we examine the role of personality as a moderator of the relationships between social presence and user outcomes (i.e., perceived learning and user satisfaction).
Therefore, the goals of the current research are to investigate the impact of social features on social presence perceptions (Study 1), and to understand the impact of user personality on the relationship between social presence and learner outcomes (i.e., satisfaction, perceived learning; Study 2). To address these questions, we examine the effectiveness of social features within an online learning platform called onQ1. This platform allows users to asynchronously communicate by inserting comments and emoji reactions along the timeline of the video.
Section snippets
Social presence in online learning
Research on social presence has a rich history, stemming from its original conceptualization by Short, Williams, and Christie (1976), who proposed that social presence was an integral quality of the communication medium. This early perspective assumed that computer-mediated communication “filtered out” important audio and visual cues inherent in face to face communication, and therefore was less personal and incapable of fostering high degrees of social presence. According to this perspective,
Study 1
The purpose of study 1 was to test the impact of asynchronous user comments on user social presence perceptions. This study was conducted within the onQ learning platform, which is described in detail in Section 3.1.3. This study was a controlled experiment, and we compared a control condition, in which there were no comments from other users, with an experimental condition, in which participants could see comments from other users (seeded by the research team).
Study 2 overview and hypotheses
Building upon the results of Study 1, the purpose of Study 2 was to understand who benefits most from perceiving a high degree of social presence. To explore this question, we examined user personality factors as moderators of the relationships between social presence perceptions and two outcomes, namely perceived learning and satisfaction. These outcomes were chosen for a couple of reasons. First, these outcomes reflect the components of a traditional reaction-level course evaluation that
Discussion
As the popularity of online learning continues to increase, so too does the need to understand how to enhance the learning experience for users in online, video-centric environments. The current paper described two studies that contributed to our understanding of this issue in at least three ways.
First, in Study 1 we showed that incorporating asynchronous social features (such as comments) that are embedded onto a video timeline can increase users’ social presence perceptions, thereby enhancing
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Stephanie A. Andel: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Visualization, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Triparna de Vreede: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Supervision. Paul E. Spector: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - review & editing, Supervision. Balaji Padmanabhan: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - review & editing, Supervision. Vivek K. Singh:
Acknowledgment
Partial support for this research was provided by onQ.
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