When I moved all my courses to fully online as a result of COVID-19 restrictions, I quickly found that something which I could not immediately pinpoint was missing. I noticed that the sense of immediate feedback which I usually get in class was not there when teaching online, especially through a suboptimal tool which does not make it possible to have participants having their video on at all times. Perhaps the most obvious lack was related to the use of humour – with no real interaction, there was a complete absence of a sense of pace in the delivery and reception of funny remarks, and what thus predominated was a sense of uselessness of humour in such context. When I joined the ONL course, I came across the concept of ‘social presence’ which then became a way for me to name the lack I had been experiencing in my online teaching.

I am now fully sold on the idea that in online teaching, I need to make conscious, strategically designed efforts to enhance the social presence of the participants. One of the practices I will definitely adopt is that of icebreakers. Nadya, one of our ONL groupmates, has shared (and implemented) a number of icebreaking practices in our PBL group, and this enhances a sense of social presence in the beginning of sessions. But then, there is a need to nurture this social presence throughout the sessions as well. This involves, as the Community of Inquiry framework suggests, paying attention to (1) personal and affective aspects, (2) open communication, and (3) group cohesion (Vaughan et al., 2013), all of which can be challenging in an online learning environment. Two of the four challenges that Boelens et al. (2017) discuss relate directly to these aspects: facilitating interaction and fostering an affective climate. They find that facilitating interaction is easier with a blended learning approach, where there is still an important face-to-face component. Back to my PBL5 groupmate Nadya (Patel and Oittinen, 2020) here, as she provides excellent tips on how to do this online by expanding on Vaughan et al. (2013). She emphasizes not only providing opportunities for initial introductions and ongoing social interaction, but also making sure that in relation to both learning modes and course activities, there are always opportunities for extended talks with the course participants, as a systematic practice online, offline and when possible, face-to-face. As noted by my other groupmate Tuire (Patel and Oittinen, 2020), also drawing on Vaughan et al. (2013), all this requires careful planning before the course and implementation throughout the course.

So for the future online and blended learning environments I will facilitate, I vouch to pay much more attention, and plan much more carefully, how all the dimensions of social presence will be enabled. One good additional guidance for this purpose is no doubt the impressive summary of instructional activities to enhance the different forms of presence in an online learning context, compiled by Fiock (2020) – and this reminds me that while I should do my utmost to make sure there is ample social presence in those learning environments I facilitate, I should never neglect the other two presences, cognitive presence and teaching presence!

References

Boelens, R., De Wever, B., & Voet, M. (2017). Four key challenges to the design of blended learning: A systematic literature review. Educational Research Review, 22, 1-18.

Fiock, H. (2020). Designing a Community of Inquiry in Online Courses. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 21(1), 135-153.

Patel, N. and Oittinen, T. (2020). 2. Facilitating student-student & student(s)-tutor interaction. In ONL202 PBL5, ‘Four Challenges in Blended Learning & Tips to Overcome Them’. Available at: https://www.sutori.com/story/four-challenges-in-blended-learning-tips-to-overcome-them–MGJ7xrAoYGRMtQJP8zfa9Udn (accessed December 2 2020)

Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. Edmonton: AU Press. Chapter 1 “The Community of Inquiry Conceptual framework”.