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Is Anybody There? Exploring The Role Of Social Presence In An Online Political Science Research Methods Class, Delton Daigle, Aaron Stuvland

Faculty Publications - Department of History and Politics

Social presence, or the “being there” and “being real” presence of others in an online learning environment, is widely considered to have a positive impact on student motivation and participation, actual and perceived learning, course and instructor satisfaction, and retention in online courses (Richardson et al. 2017; Oh et al. 2018). Several aspects of social presence remain understudied however, such as how gender, class rank, and other demographical characteristics may influence perceptions of social presence and condition the relationship between perceptions of social presence and academic performance or course satisfaction. Furthermore, although studies of the impact of social presence abound, …