The Human Element MOOC

The Human Element Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on the Canvas open network was designed to be a connectivist experience exploring methods for the humanization of online education. This MOOC introduced and discussed methods that faculty could adopt in order to potentially increase instructor presence, social presence, and cognitive presence within their own online courses. The design of the MOOC and the learners' perceptions of social presence after taking part in this MOOC are discussed in this chapter.

Creating a Culture of Engagement

Many online faculty members pattern their teaching after traditional models of face-to-face instruction. However, these models fail to support meaningful content delivery and interaction in today's online classroom. This chapter discusses faculty development efforts that serve to cultivate effective online teaching practices. Presenting the communication processes and technical skills necessary to create social presence in online and hybrid courses, the chapter equips both novice and experienced instructors with the tools required to redesign traditional courses for online delivery, to deliver quality instruction, and to promote strong interaction. Teaching strategies and adult learning theory are explored. The appropriate use of technology to achieve desired student learning outcomes is also discussed. In addition, instructors' concerns and attitudes towards the implementation of social presence strategies in online learning are examined.

Digital Identity, Social Presence Technologies, and Presence Learning

This chapter characterizes the way in which social presence technologies mediate digital identity, presence learning, and Presence Pedagogy (P2) in the context of higher education. It is argued that digital identity, presence learning, and P2 manifest themselves through the four social presence technologies in varying degrees. Against this backdrop, the chapter first provides a concise overview of digital identity, social presence, presence learning, and P2. Second, it presents seven projects to demonstrate how digital identity, presence learning, and P2 are mediated by these four social presence technologies. Third, the chapter outlines future trends likely to influence social presence technologies, digital identities, presence learning, and P2.

Bridging the Social and Teaching Presence Gap in Online Learning

Feelings of disconnection and isolation from teachers and other classmates could have a major negative impact on students' satisfaction and success when learning online. This chapter describes how a variety of Web 2.0 tools have been used to establish and maintain teaching and social presence in online learning. Rather than limiting contact to the virtual world created by well-designed interfaces of learning management system platforms, the creative use of Web conferencing in online teaching not only brings students and teachers together as real human beings but also generates interactions that create more interest and higher engagement. The combined use of synchronous and asynchronous tools, together with mobile devices, has made online learning more flexible, accessible, and credible.

Fostering Interaction and Social Presence through eCollaboration

eCollaboration is an instructional strategy used in online courses in which two or more students work collaboratively at a distance to achieve a pre-determined instructional outcome. In order to work together at a distance, social, cognitive, and teacher presence are required. In this chapter, the authors focus on how social presence informs eCollaboration in the fundamental learning concepts of the strategy, the learning frameworks that support collaborative learning, and for building and supporting learning experiences.

Increasing Research Students' Engagement through Virtual Communities

This chapter describes important issues regarding research students' participation in a virtual community. Within a virtual community, university staff can communicate with research students without geographical/space constraints, and research students can exchange views, materials, and experience with their peers and/or academics in a flexible learning environment. Students' participation in virtual communities is mainly based on socio-emotional and informational motivations. Initially, this chapter describes the conditions of research in a traditional environment and the role of students and academics in it, along with the role of pedagogical and psychological aspects in virtual communities. Examples from a university virtual community developed in a Virtual Learning Environment and a Facebook™ closed group are presented. Apart from discussion forums, blended learning activities also increase students' engagement in virtual communities. Technical issues and difficulties based on different learning environments and university members' experience and familiarity with technology are highlighted and discussed.

Examining Design Pattern Strategies as a Means to Achieve Social Presence in the Online Classroom

Design patterns have received much attention across multiple design domains where social interaction is a central goal because they have great potential for capturing and sharing design knowledge. Design patterns, design pattern language, and design pattern libraries demonstrate potential benefits to novice and expert online course designers. Trends affecting the growth of online courses and resultant pitfalls negatively affecting students and instructors indicate the need for social presence design. A literature review addresses the importance of social interaction, differentiated design, learning-oriented social networking, and Web design structures in an effort to assuage the experience of isolation reported by the majority of online students. The authors argue that design patterns are a method of overcoming many of these apparent obstacles to quality online course design and learning engagement. Additionally, they present example design patterns to solve specific social interacting problems.

Building Social Presence through Engaging Online Instructional Strategies

Social presence in the online learning environment is best developed when the instructor is the facilitator of knowledge and the students are the seekers of knowledge. Strategies for consciously developing social presence among learners are provided. This chapter includes the Online Steps to Complex Cognition, an educational model that displays five successive stages of the online learning process and how social presence can be heightened at each stage. Positive levels of social presence allow students to engage in critical discourse and promote learning as they intellectually and socially engage and build a level of mutual trust and respect with their teachers and with other learners.

Cultural Inclusivity in Online Learning

This chapter addresses the complexities of building an effective learning environment in light of a diverse, multicultural student group. Existing research focuses on how to foster learning in traditional classroom environments, comprised of students from varied cultures and backgrounds. Yet, little is known about what strategies towards cultural inclusion are effective in an online learning environment. This chapter discusses the influence of cultural difference in online learning and provides ways courses can be more inclusive. This chapter is beneficial for instructors, course designers, and administrators who want to learn more about how to foster a culturally inclusive learning environment in online course settings.

Using a Distributed Learning Environment Model to Foster Learner-Educator Interaction

With the advancement of information technology, computer networks, mobile devices, wireless networks, smart phones, the Internet, and the use of social networking tools, learning modalities have greatly expanded, allowing for increased activity between the learner and the educator, and also among learners. This chapter presents a Distributed Learning Environment (DLE) model that can be used to help educators design, implement, and assess learner interaction in an online course while keeping the learner at the center of the learning process. Outlined in this chapter are strategies for fostering learner-educator and learner-learner interaction while also keeping in mind the need for assessment of the learner in a distributed learning environment.