Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Social Presence As Best Practice: The Online Classroom Needs To Feel Real, Delton T. Daigle, Aaron Stuvland

Faculty Publications - Department of History and Politics

As universities around the world stopped delivering face to face classes, the nonintentional creation of many online digital learning spaces has led to much speculation on “best practices” for virtual course delivery. Our evidence shows that the highest educational value comes from optimizing the “social presence” of your classroom environment. Using data collected from an undergraduate political science research methods course prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, across 3 semesters at a large public university, we find by maximizing perceptual social presence - or the feeling that a student is actively engaged in a “real” classroom environment, students report greater satisfaction …