As demonstrated in the previous section, several researchers have contributed to furthering discussion on presence. This section will now take a closer look at the element of social presence that was referred to by Biocca (1995; cited by McLellan 1996b, 8), Garrison, Anderson and Archer (2000, 88) and Rourke et al. (2001). The present study considers the element of social presence particularly important as one of the key concepts from the perspective of this study—the concept of a collabora-tive learning environment discussed in section 3.4—emphasizes interaction with others and thereby has a close link to social presence.
The concept of social presence was first introduced by Short, Williams &
Christie (1976) who, exploring the issue from the perspective of social psychology, regarded social presence as an important key to understanding person-to-person telecommunications. In their theory based on feelings of ‘social presence’, Short, Williams & Christie (1976, 64–65) defined social presence as a quality of a com-munications medium itself, which is subjectively perceived by its users. They hy-pothesized that communications media varied in their degree of social presence and that because the users of any given communications medium were in some sense aware of the degree of social presence of the medium, they therefore tended to avoid using the medium for certain types of interactions. This was the case specifi-cally regarding interactions requiring a higher degree of social presence than the users perceive the medium to have.
Furthermore, Short, Williams & Christie (1976, 65) emphasized that the ca-pacity of the medium to transmit information about facial expression, direction of looking, posture, dress and non-verbal vocal cues all contributed to the social pres-ence of a communications medium. They argued that the way the medium contrib-uted was “determined by the individual, because we conceive of the Social Pres-ence of a medium as a perceptual or attitudinal dimension of the user, a ‘mental set’ towards the medium.” (Short, Williams & Christie 1976, 66)
Short, Williams & Christie (1976, 72) also argued that social presence was related to two other concepts in social psychology: Argyle and Dean’s concept of intimacy and Wiener and Mehrabian’s concept of immediacy. In describing inti-macy, Argyle and Dean (1965; cited by Short, Williams & Christie (1976, 72) postulated that when two people enter into a conversation they would try to reach an equilibrium of the factors affecting the overall level of intimacy. Apart from physical distance, such factors include eye contact, smiling and personal topics of
conversation. This can lead to many predictions, such as people tending to avoid eye contact and increasing their physical separation if personal topics are dis-cussed, thus being able to maintain an optimum level of intimacy.
From the perspective of this study, intimacy is mainly seen as the level of in-timacy prevailing in discussions taking place in computer conferences such as the informal Café conferences or the e-mail interactions between the students and the teacher. In this sense, intimacy could then be regarded as the way personal topics are being discussed or the degree to which personal topics are brought up or avoided. In the current study, intimacy is seen to overlap with the concept of im-mediacy to such an extent that it will be regarded as being part of imim-mediacy rather than being a distinctly separate issue.
According to Wiener and Mehrabian (1968; cited in Short, Williams &
Christie 1976, 73), immediacy, the second related concept to social presence, re-fers to the measure of the psychological distance that a communicator puts between himself and the object of his communication. Wiener and Mehrabian originally applied the concept of immediacy to an understanding of speech. They showed that immediacy in speech could be manifested in many different ways. For instance, they pointed out how using ‘Let us…’ or ‘we’ could connote a feeling of closeness and association as opposed to ‘I…’ or ‘you’.
Short, Williams & Christie (1976, 73) extended the concept of immediacy to include a consideration of other aspects of communication by indicating that a per-son can convey immediacy or non-immediacy non-verbally as well as verbally, for instance, by physical proximity, formality of dress, and facial expression. They also argued that the more information a medium can transmit, the greater its imme-diacy. Therefore, the use of face-to-face communication implies greater immediacy than the use of the telephone, for instance. Finally, Short, Williams & Christie (1976, 73) made the point that for any given medium of communication and situa-tion, immediacy may vary while the social presence afforded by the medium—the degree to which the user of the medium is perceived as a “real person”—will be the same.
In her seminal study (1979), Andersen applied the immediacy construct to in-vestigate teaching effectiveness. In the study, teacher immediacy was conceptual-ized as nonverbal behaviors that reduce physical and/or psychological distance between teachers and students (Andersen 1979, 543). Her study demonstrated that immediacy was a good predictor of student affect and student behavioral commit-ment and that teaching teachers to be more immediate might improve teacher-student relationships. In recent years, there has been a growing body of research regarding teacher and student immediacy in the classroom and its role in student satisfaction and motivation and positive learning outcomes For instance, a study conducted by McCroskey et al. (1996) on nonverbal teacher immediacy and cogni-tive learning in American, Australian, Finnish and Puerto Rican universities
indi-cated that in all four cultures, increased teacher immediacy was associated with an increase in perceived learning and a decrease in learning loss. The study also showed that students from high immediacy cultures seem to expect high immedi-acy from their teachers. On the other hand, the results of Baringer and McCros-key’s (2000) study examining perceived student nonverbal immediacy behaviors in the classroom showed that teachers who perceived their students to be more non-verbally immediate with them in the classrooms expressed more positive affect for the students than did teachers who perceived their students as engaging in less nonverbally immediate behaviors.
5.2.1 Social Presence and Immediacy in Network-based Environments Along with the exponentially growing number of technology-mediated educational settings, research into the constructs of social presence and immediacy related to such settings is also expanding. What seems somewhat problematic, though, is that some researchers use ‘immediacy’ (cf. e.g., Freitas, Myers and Avgtis 1998;
LaRose and Whitten 2000; Arbaugh 2000; 2001) as the theoretical underpinning for their research, whereas others draw upon the concept of ‘social presence’ (cf.
e.g., Rafaeli 1988; Gunawardena 1995; Tu 2000; 2002; Rourke et al. 2001;
Richardson & Swan 2003). In many cases it is not clear how the two concepts might differ from each other. Yet, for instance, studies have been conducted both on social presence and teacher immediacy behaviors in relation to students’ per-ceived learning and satisfaction, indicating that social presence and immediacy are highly correlated with favorable learning outcomes. This overlapping may be caused by different research traditions. In general, it would seem that immediacy studies have been conducted by researchers representing communication education in particular, whereas researchers representing other fields of behavioral sciences, notably educational psychology, have centered on the aspects of social presence in mediated educational environments. The current study chooses the concept of so-cial presence as its theoretical basis. Furthermore, it adopts the view presented by Hiltz (1996) who argues that immediacy is a dimension of social presence.
McIsaac and Gunawardena (1996) define social presence as the degree to which a person feels “socially present” in a mediated situation, linking the issue to a larger social context including e.g. motivation, attitudes, social interaction, and social equality. Gunawardena and Zittle (1997, 9) refer to social presence as the degree to which a person is perceived as “real” in mediated communication. Fur-thermore, Garrison (1997, 6), who considers social presence an important concept in understanding social context and creating a social climate, for instance, in com-puter conferences, associates social presence with the degree that individuals pro-ject themselves through the medium, which can be done verbally or nonverbally.
In educational research, the constructs of immediacy and social presence have also been applied to network-based education. For instance, studies have been con-ducted on social presence and teacher immediacy behaviors in relation to students’
perceived learning and satisfaction. Such studies seem to indicate that social pres-ence and immediacy are highly correlated with favorable learner outcomes. Medi-ated environments using computer-mediMedi-ated communication have been examined in particular (cf. e.g. Rafaeli 1988, Tu 2000; 2002, Rourke et al. 2001; Richardson
& Swan 2003). Furthermore, significant research into the social presence construct and network-based educational environments has been carried out by Gunawardena (1995). She conducted two studies that examined whether social presence is largely an attribute of the communication medium or users’ perception of the medium in the context of computer-mediated communication (CMC). The results of the stud-ies showed that even though CMC is considered a medium that is low in social context cues, it could be perceived as interactive, active, interesting, and stimulat-ing by conference participants.
In general, research into social presence in network-based educational settings largely focuses on computer conferencing and online discussions (Garrison, Ander-son & Archer 2000; AnderAnder-son et al. 2001; Rourke et al. 2001). In their study on the relationship between asynchronous, text-based forms of social communication and students’ perceptions of the social climate of computer conferences, Rourke & An-derson (2002) found that the majority of students found the conference warm, friendly, trusting, disinhibiting, and personal. The social expressions corresponding to the more positive ratings of the social environment included addressing others by name, complimenting, expressing appreciation, using the reply feature to post messages, expressing emotions, using humor, and salutations. Hiltz (1998) argues that in text-based CMC, missing “non-verbal” communication including facial ex-pressions, tone of voice, gestures, direction of gaze, posture, actions, dress, “de-cor”, and physical presence can directly decrease “social presence”. Consequently, online teachers must deliberately structure interaction patterns to overcome the potential lack of social presence of the medium.
Over recent years there have been efforts to develop instruments for assessing social presence in network-based learning environments (Gunawardena & Zittle 1997; Rourke et al 2001; Richardson & Swan 2003). Based on the transcripts of online discussions, several studies have been conducted on how participants in network-based learning environments interact and network socially and how such interaction contributes to the feeling of social presence. However, both operation-alizing and measuring the degree of social presence and its impact on the course climate, students’ satisfaction and learning outcomes in text-based educational course formats have not been unproblematic.
It can be argued that it is because of the difficult nature of the task that the de-velopment of new instruments for assessing social presence has been relatively
slow. Cookson and Chang (1995, 19) indicate that many instruments for observing classroom interaction were developed in the 1960s, Flanders’s systematic teacher-behavior focused interaction analysis systems being the best known. In the 1970s researchers started adopting discourse analysis approaches initiated by the seminal research by Sinclair and Coulthard (1975), who developed a system of analysis for classroom discourse. Currently, there seems to be a gradually growing interest in furthering the development of the needed instruments (cf. e.g., Fahy 2002); Tu 2002) for analyzing and assessing social presence in network-based learning envi-ronments.