Social presence and the formality - week 9

March 30, 2010

One of the posting that I had commented on for week 9 was the issue of whether or not students with high social presence were less or more formal in their discussions. The Shih and Swan article commented that students with high social presence were less formal. I pondered back through my postings to determine if I have become more or less formal throughout time. As I was reading back through my postings from the start of the class I was unable to determine if I was truly more formal than I am at this point. Some of the students in the discussion noted that they thought many ingredients contributed to the formality of the postings. I would have to agree that the formality seems to depend on the topic or issue that I am discussing. I tend to be more formal for the discussions that are more formal in nature and less formal for those discussions that require less formalities (i.e., metaphor discussion = less formality). Many of the readings thus far are heavily promoting the concepts of being present in courses. I remember taking online courses before the heavy expansion (or during the heavy expansion in 2003-2004 time frame) into online learning, and I remember that the classes were all taught in a strictly asynchronous fashion and many times the instructor would take days to a week to respond to questions. It is impressive to reflect back to those times and courses and compare with the courses that I am taking now. The concept of being present and prompt did not exist in those courses and often times isolation was an inadvertent outcome. Now the courses that I take are rapid in response and the social atmosphere is far larger. One concept that I think would be beneficial for distance education classrooms and would help foster social presence would be to have smaller groups of people that are assigned to a study group with an area to study such as study group area that a couple of students can grow and work with each other and answer each others questions.