An Experiment in Social

PresenceA Book Chapter writing experience

with Dr. Patrick Lowenthal

Whitney KilgorePhD Student

University of North TexasSpring 2014

Collaborative Writing

Advice for other PhD Students:

• My best learning experiences have been those I

sought out.

• After reading and citing someone for years, it is

time to meet them.

• It never hurts to ask about collaborating on a

project.

• I was humbled and honored to have the

opportunity to work with Dr. Lowenthal – he is

WONDERFUL.

• I highly recommend collaborating with others to

improve your own skills.

Introduction

MOOCs draw attention to Online Learning

Causes confusion

Online Education is different

Not massive, open, or video heavy

Not all MOOCs are created equal either (c vs. x)

Goal: Promote the Human Touch in online courses

using a cMOOC

Background

Why do students drop out of online programs?

Feelings of isolation and lonliness (Bischoff, 2000;

Croft, Dalton, & Grant, 2010; Ludwig-Hardman &

Dunlap, 2003)

Connectivism – distributed knowledge across

connections with impacts in how we design and

deliver learning regardless of whether it builds upon

previous learning theories or is a theory on its own

(Dron, 2014; Kop & Hill, 2008).

Community of Inquiry

Developed by Garrison, Anderson and Archer in the

late 90’s

The Community of Inquiry is comprised of:

Social presence

Teaching presence

Cognitive presence

The interest in social presence is partly due to its long

history dating back to the 1970s (Lowenthal, 2009)

The Experiment

A MOOC built on the Community of Inquiry framework

4 weeks long and distributed on the Canvas Open

Network

The chapter breaks down the details of every week of

the course.

Method

697 participants

90% had a Master’s Degree or higher

Over ½ were 50 years old or older

56 agreed to participate in the Community of Inquiry

study

42 female/14 male

5 Bachelor’s/29 Master’s/22 Doctoral

3 participants agreed to be interviewed

Survey developed by Arbaugh et al., 2008; Swan et al., 2008)

Social Presence

Questions

Results

Scale 0-4

where 0 = strongly disagree, 4 = strongly agree

The social presence responses averaged (2.94)

High marks:

3.24 – Online communication is an excellent medium for social interaction

3.07 – Comfortable interacting with one another

Low marks:

2.68 – Comfortable disagreeing with each other

2.76 – Getting to know others gave them a sense of belonging

VoiceThread Comments

Follow up – 6 months

later

Themes

The importance of effective pedagogy

Connected to participants – still today

They have tried to humanize their courses

Effective learning about the human element though first

hand experience

Tips for Humanizing

Create instructor introduction video to get students interested in the content of the course and establish instructor presence.

Allow students to use voice or video to introduce themselves to their classmates – develops social presence.

Provide opportunities for social interaction and community building inside and outside the course (i.e. twitter, googlecommunity, LinkedIn, other).

Have students critically analyze content for sharing with the community of learners (curation).

Give student feedback on assignments using voice or video.

Conclusion

Professional Development immersion

Learned pedagogical techniques

If it improves the students experience for ONE student

it was worth it!

While participants did not feel comfortable disagreeing

with one another – that may be due to the duration of

the course.

Keep offering this course

Our chapter is the last one in this book!