Dunlap, J.C., & Lowenthal, P.R. (in press). The power of presence: Our quest for the right mix of social presence in online courses. In A.P. Mizell & A. A. Piña (Eds.) Real life distance education: Case studies in practice. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Topics and questions to keep in mind as you read:

Identify several strategies used by Dunlap and Lowenthal to foster social presence and consider how you might adapt them for your own class.
Reflect on the different findings the data provided about Twitter and social presence in this study. What can you learn from this difference and does this necessarily mean Twitter is ineffective for fostering social presence?
Spend some time considering the questions posed by the authors at the end of the article.

Abstract:

The work of Dunlap and Lowenthal has been featured several times in this class. This recent article poses some provocative, reflective questions about social presence. The authors take on the role of social scientists and engage with an exploration of their own teaching practices to understand what is working best with regards to their rich collection of social presence practices. Their findings are somewhat surprising, as Twitter was ranked lowest by students for fostering social presence and some low tech practices (like email and phone calls) ranked highest. Where does that leave us?

Click here to download a PDF of the article.

This work is by Teaching & Learning Innovations at CI and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.