Five facets of social presence in online distance education

Social presence in online learning environments refers to the degree to which a learner feels personally connected with other students and the instructor in an online learning community. Based on a 19 item Online Social Presence Questionnaire (OSPQ) given to college students in two different online learning courses, a series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses consistently revealed five factors representing facets of social presence in online learning environments: social respect (e.g. receiving timely responses), social sharing (e.g., sharing information or expressing beliefs), open mind (e.g., expressing agreement or receiving positive feedback), social identity (e.g., being called by name), and intimacy (e.g., sharing personal experiences). Together, the five factors accounted for 58% of the variance and were based on 19 items. Although much previous research focuses on cognitive aspects of learning in online environments, understanding the role of the learner’s sense of presence may be particularly important in distance learning situations in which students and the instructor are physically separated.