Summary
The study first presents the community of inquiry (COI) model designed by Garrison, Anderson and Archer (2000) and then describes the basics of the social presence template and its components and then tests the template by examining transcripts from two graduate level courses, measuring the density of social presence and calculating the interrater reliability. The COI model is designed to illustrate meaningful teaching and learning that occurs in computer conferencing in higher education. This model takes place through the interaction of three main components: cognitive presence, social presence and teacher presence. This paper focuses on the social presence component. Social presence is defined as “the ability of learners to project themselves socially and affectively into a community of inquiry”. The authors start by presenting an extensive literature overview on the concept of social presence and how it evolved with the development and expansion of online learning. The categories involved in the social presence component are then outlined. These are: Affective responses, interactive responses and cohesive responses. Affective responses involve the expression of emotions and feelings and are enlightened by several indicators such as the explicit expression of emotions, the use of humor and self-disclosure. Interactive responses show acknowledgment of others’ interferences and interpersonal acceptance and support. These kinds of responses are relevant through indicators such as: replying to other messages, quoting from others’ messages, referring to other messages and asking questions to each other. Lastly, the cohesive responses are evidence of the establishment of unions and groups in the community of inquiry. Indicators of this category involve vocatives, group pronouns, phatics and salutations.
Main Argument
Rourke, Anderson and Garrison (2001) explore the social presence in asynchronous text-based computer conferencing by explicating the social component of the community of inquiry framework. The paper’s main argument is to demonstrate that social interaction can and does occur in computer mediated discussions and that the social presence of the students and the teacher can be assessed using a quantitative content analysis template.
Thesis Statement
The study’s thesis statement argues that computer conferencing incorporates all essential pedagogical and interactional elements of effective teaching and learning and the main purpose of the study is to describe and test the efficacy of the model to assess the social presence in computer conferences.
Findings
The study showed that one of the graduate courses demonstrated a higher density of social presence for all except three of the twelve indicators of social the presence categories. The findings of the study also showed acceptable interrater reliability scores except for two of the indicators.
Recommendations
The authors finally presented recommendations for future research and explained the need to conduct studies that triangulate the findings with participants’ attitudes and perceptions of social interaction and that correlate the social presence with learning outcomes.
Critique
This article is cited by 320 other articles according to Google scholar. This number is an evidence of its strength and reliability either as a framework of quantitative content analyses or as a theoretical foundation for studies of online communities of learning. The study is being replicated by many scholars in the field despite the difficult and time consuming aspect of content analysis.
I found this study to be very rich and informative. It is a primary paper to read and reference when researching social presence and interaction in computer conferences. It not only offers a theoretical framework for future studies but it also presents an instrument for identifying and measuring social presence in an online learning environment.
The arguments and ideas discussed and demonstrated in the research are very clearly and objectively stated. The organization style of the paper seems excellent to me. It is nicely laid out and it was easy and straightforward to follow the arguments.
Rourke et al. (2001) undertake the research from a factual perspective. They tracked the history of social interaction in a thorough and extensive overview of the literature and they presented supporting and opposing points of view from different writers and researchers in the field and compared different opinions in an attempt to convince the reader that social presence is not an exclusive component of face-to-face learning environments and that it is present in computer mediated conferences.
A mainly quantitative study is conducted and the results are analyzed with no subjectivity. The authors make sure that all interpretations are made upon facts and findings. The point of view of the authors is objective and departs from a need to appreciate and evaluate the social presence in educational computer conferences.
The importance of this article resides in the fact that it provides a reliable framework in conducting quantitative content analysis of online discussions. Secondly, the article sheds the light on an important component of online discussions that is often either ignored or overlooked: social presence. Garrison and Vaughan (2008) explain that “communication is established when students are encouraged to project themselves personally and academically” (p. 20) and this is only possible when the community of inquiry allows for such an open and free learning environment. Social interaction among students and the teacher is an essential and valuable contributor to achieve the desired learning outcomes.
I also appreciate the recommendations of the authors regarding future researches that undertake other variables or factors that affect and could be affected by the density of the social presence.
Overall, I agree with the arguments of the authors and I find that their designed tool for assessing social presence is a reliable one. However, I don’t believe that it is generic enough to be applied as is to different online settings. In the fall 2007 semester, in my quantitative research methods course, I had the chance to conduct a research using quantitative content analysis to compare the cognitive and social processes of two sections of the same course, one delivered in the face-to-face format and the other one using the online learning environment. While analyzing the transcripts of both courses, I used a modified version of the model of Rourke et al. because the original version was somehow restrictive in terms of the indicators of the model.
Therefore, my concern regarding this framework is its extent of flexibility. When examining and analyzing online transcripts against predefined social presence categories, a researcher will have the tendency to restrict the findings against the adopted framework and might miss some instances of social presence that are not present in the model. This is related to the fact that different online settings affect the flow and development of the learning communities. Difference in the settings is related to differences in students’ demographics, differences in the course level and program, differences in the cultures involved and many other specifications. Having a flexible framework allows the researcher to adapt it to the setting of the course in question.
This is why I suggest that this framework could be used as the foundation and the base for quantitative content analysis however amendments and additions to the indicators of the social presence categories should occur when necessary. One example of this might relate to multi-cultural online settings where the sense of affective responses (humor and emotions) is different from one culture to another. One of the main objectives of online learning is to capture students from all over the world and to provide the opportunity of experiencing international education without time and space barriers. To accomplish this objective, the multi-cultural aspect of the online learning communities must be considered and therefore identified in the social presence categories and indicators.
Reflection
This article made me realize and appreciate the importance and value of the social factor in online learning environments and will help me put exceptional effort while designing blended learning courses to integrate all three components of the COI framework. The intersections between the three components suggest that the social interaction between students and teachers affect the cognitive presence of the participants and is on the other side affected by the teacher presence. What I will take from this article is the consideration of all three components of the framework and their interaction, but I will make sure that the templates that identify and measure each component are flexible enough to meet the needs and specific requirements of each course setting.
References:
Rourke, L., Anderson, T., Archer, W. & Garrison, D. R., (1999). Assessing social presence in asynchronous, text-based computer conferences, Journal of Distance Education, 14 (3), 51-70.
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