As I reflect over the past one and half years of studying at the MAT, I can’t but honest say that I have never enjoyed and learned so much. As you can tell our MAT program is a hybrid model but mostly online. And as far as I am concerned, I have never so far attend in-person classes because I did not have that chance, but look if the goal is to learn and feel ‘socially present’ in classes, I have both learned at my satisfaction and felt socially present in my classes. This experience of mine would completely resonate what Lowenthal (2009) states that “research has shown that learner’s perceptions of social presence are related to their satisfaction with the course, the instructor, and at times their learning” (p. 6). But I also want to say that my professors had a great sense of support to make my online classes would also have emotional developments too. So, I would say this is a two-way road between the educator and the student. At this point there is another thinking that not only the student-teacher interaction is important but also a student-student interaction. While the teacher-student interaction seems to be essential, the student-student interaction is necessary but not essential a sense of social presence. For example, Newberry (2005) says “…, in situations where participants do not expect significant levels of learner-learner interaction, levels of social presence do not seem to be related to perceptions of student satisfaction” (p. 1909).
I usually feel ‘virtually socially present’ in my classes even when I am reading a comment or watching a video of my classmates asynchronously. But look this is honestly what I feel – doesn’t it sound more socially present? While, may not agree with Loeb (2020) who says that “students who struggle will likely struggle more online”, I may say that initially until a students gets used to working with online tools, platforms and applications, online seems challenging, frustrating, and lonely. But everything new would give us this sense, right? Not inventing and/or adapting to new changes would mean stagnation or complacency, both of which will mean lagging behind. I don’t want that, do you?
References:
Loeb, S. (2020). How effective is online learning? What the research does and doesn’t tell us. Education Week, 39(28), 17.
Lowenthal, P. R. (2009). Social presence. In Encyclopedia of Distance Learning, Second Edition (pp. 1900-1906). IGI Global.
Newberry, B. (2005). Social presence in distance learning. In Encyclopedia of distance learning (pp. 1907-1913). IGI Global.