The Relationship Between the Students’ Perception of Social Presence Online and Their Achievement

I: Introduction

The period of examination on whether online learning is the way to go or not has expired. Regardless of what previous studies on online learning have found, online learning is here. The demand for it led educational organizations to adopt it. The revolution of technology facilitated implementing it. Its convenience, flexibility, and other advantages made it a favorable learning form. The existence of this learning should lead researchers to explore the factors that help in improving the quality of it rather than examining its validity.

As the online learning environment brought new kinds of communications between instructors and their students and among students themselves , it lacks direct human communication and the feeling of belonging to a community. This feeling encourages students to participate in the learning activities which lead to completing the course and the potential of increasing the students’ cognitive and affective learning. Jolivette (2006)

Research revealed the importance of the interaction among the learners in order to develop cognitive knowledge (Viygotsky, 1978; Sharan, 1980). Jolivette (2006) explained that the interaction among learners allows them to share ideas and knowledge which enhance their cognitive learning ; the social support enhances their feeling of social presence and at the end, their satisfaction with the course, which is their affective learning.

Richardson and Swan (2003) found in their study that students who had high scores in their learning were those who had high perceptions of social presence and satisfaction. They concluded that “students’ perceptions of social presence contributed significantly to the predictor equation for students’ perceived learning overal...

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...Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks

Bai, H. (2003). Student motivation and social presence in online learning: Implications for future research. In C. Crawford et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of society for information technology and teacher education international conference (pp. 2714-2720).

Jolivette, B.J. (2006). Social presence and its relevancy to cognitive and affective learning in an asynchronous distance-learning environment: A preliminary literature review.

Russo, T., & Benson, S. (2005). Learning with invisible others: Perceptions of online presence and their relationship to cognitive and affective learning. Educational Technology & Society, 8(1), 54-62.

Jiang, M. and Ting, E. (2000). A study of factors influencing students' perceived learning in a web-based course environment. International Journal of Educational Telecommunications, 6(4), 317-338.