Social presence in online learning communities may be defined as the degree to ... different theories on social presence are resumed and integrated, in order to ...
On Social Presence: Theories, Methodologies, and Guidelines for the Innovative Contexts of Computer-Mediated Learning Stefano Triberti Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano, Italy Eleonora Brivio Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano, Italy Carlo Galimberti Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano, Italy ABSTRACT Social presence in online learning communities may be defined as the degree to which a learner feels connected with other learners and the teacher/educator, within a computer-mediated context. However, social presence is a broad construct that cannot be reduced to its manifestation in the specific context of distance-learning communities. How can we feel the presence of others? In virtue of what such a sensation may establish in our consciousness when others are actually not present in the physical environment we are in? The present contribution includes a review of the main theoretical proposals to understand social presence, along with their guidelines to promote it, specific instruments and possible issues. Then, the different theories on social presence are resumed and integrated, in order to provide practical design guidelines open to the new technologies that may constitute innovative resources for the computer-mediated learning tools of the future (virtual reality, virtual worlds, augmented reality, and ambient intelligence). KEYWORDS: COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION, VIRTUAL REALITY, VIRTUAL WORLDS, INTERSUBJECTIVITY, SOCIAL INFORMATION, AUGMENTED REALITY, AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE
INTRODUCTION New communication technologies have brought innovative, extraordinary opportunities for personal relationships, networking, and collaborative activities such as work and learning. Historically, such innovations have been accompanied by philosophical and scientific study devoted to understand whether mediated interactions could be regarded as more or less similar to face-to-face communication. Is computersupported work effective? Is mediated learning desirable? And, more specifically, what factors are important (to be analyzed, measured, reduced or improved) in order to promote the processes impacting the final outcomes of mediated interactions? Among these factors, the fundamental construct of social presence has emerged. Social presence can be defined as the perception of being present with others within an environment that is characterized by some sort/level of mediation granted by communication technologies (Biocca & Harms, 2002). Indeed, when we use a webchat, read others’ comments on our social network profile, play an online-based multiplayer video game or attend an online course, we could feel more or less the sensation that other people are “there” with us and that an actual relationship is emerging (or may emerge) among us and them. On the other hand, if such a perception does not manifest in our own consciousness, no interaction will be possible at all, along with the potential desirable outcomes it could bring (learning, collaborative work, social capital etc.).
But what exactly is social presence, and what factors do generate, maintain, or enhance it? Does social presence depend on defined characteristics within the communicators involved (such as social attitude, personality, emotional expression), or is it more related to technological features and the advancement of the medium? The aim of this chapter is to describe social presence and relative theories, and discuss its relevance to mediated learning.
Classic Theories The first theory on social presence has been provided by Short and colleagues (Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976), who defined it as the “degree of salience of the other person in the interaction and the consequent salience of the interpersonal relationships” (p.65). In this context, social presence seemed to be considered an attentional feature, where one feels more or less in the company of another depending on the other’s “detectability” within the mediated interaction. Specifically, such salience was influenced by features of the medium, namely intimacy and immediacy. Indeed, Short et al.’s objective was mainly to highlight differences among a limited number of communication technologies which were available at that time. For example, video-based communication can be regarded as more intimate and immediate than the telephone, basically because two communicators may see each other and they can count on more tools/affordances to exchange information (Johansen, 1977). Short and colleagues’ theory does not give specific design guidelines; they seem to imply that social presence can only be enhanced when more communication devices/affordances are given to the communicators to use. Moreover, this first theory of social presence is not adequate to explain the complexity of phenomena related to mediated interaction anymore, nor to provide specific design guidelines for the huge number of technological devices existing today. Indeed, some limitations can be ascribed to Short and colleagues’ theories. As first, at least in its original formulation, the theory seems to be focused on the specific case of one-to-one interaction (i.e., salience “of the other person,” p.65). Moreover, the construct of intimacy is probably more easily related to the interaction with a single other person. This theory does not adequately explain situations in which there are more people communicating with each other (e.g., group interactions), when attention and intimacy features are distributed among different receivers. Secondly, it seems (or at least it is debatable) that speaking about “intimacy” would relate to positive interactions: but, social presence can also be established when two or more communicators are fighting, conflicting, hiding information from each other, and so on (Davide, Triberti & Collovà, 2014). Finally, one last limitation of the theory is its inadequacy to the contemporary technological context, as it is not able to attribute a social presence level to interactions happening in very similar media. For example, while intimacy/immediacy differences are quite evident among video-based chat and telephone, is there a difference between two pieces of software for video chat (e.g.: Skype and VidyoWeb)? More specifically, what is the difference among two interactions happening within the same medium? If social presence is related to the “type of medium,” then the only possible choice for a designer/developer will be to select media that are very different from each other; but, the theory does not give specific information to distinguish social presence levels among interactions that are very similar for what regards the technologies involved. This is probably related to the theory being intended as an instrument to qualify social presence features within those technologies that mediate the interaction, without a focus on the content and the participants to the interaction as well. Media richness theories appeared ten years later and provide a more specific account of the factors determining social presence, although similar to the view of Short and colleagues’. Daft and Lengel (1986) maintained that social presence level is a function of the number of social clues (e.g.: non-verbal behavior) that the technological medium allows to be transmitted from one communicator to another. In this sense, specific mediums can be regarded as more likely to promote social presence than others because they provide the communicators with more avenues for interaction and methods by which to convey relevant information via technology. Although not based on the concept of intimacy and immediacy, this theory seems similar to Short and his colleagues’ view. However, it allows researchers to consider more factors when differentiating social presence levels among specific interactions and similar communication tools. Moreover, extending this theory may help to explain some specific communication phenomena, such as the
emergence of pragmatic devices in mediated interaction (Varnhagen et al., 2010), namely graphic or linguistic violations of writing rules to convey meaning and emotions. Indeed, web chat and instant messaging applications are ‘less rich’ than video or virtual reality, which include graphic images and digital representations of the users. If we consider web chat’s intrinsic communicational properties, we should say that only language (and specifically written language) is available for the users to communicate and transmit information. Besides that, chat users developed a number of “devices” to be included in web chat communication in order to express emotion and meaning (that is the reason why they are labeled “pragmatic”) more complex than what can be actually transmitted through written language only: these include emoticons as graphical representations of facial expressions; specific uses of punctuation (e.g., long series of dots to express perplexity); new idiomatic expressions (e.g., “lol” meaning “laughing out loud”); and capital letters to communicate anger or emphasis. This specific phenomenon shows that media richness certainly is important for what regards the quality of communication among mediated technology users, so that they can autonomously develop new ways to express their feelings when a given media offers limited opportunities to this aim. However, it is not very clear how much this has to do with social presence. Is social presence a matter of augmenting pragmatic devices only? Or rather, the actual quantity (richness) of social cues is not fundamental to enhancing social presence? An interesting example on this matter is the one featuring a person who visits a house haunted by a ghost. Such a scenario is totally plausible if we consider video games. Typically, a horror video game does not show the ghost immediately; rather, the player has to explore the haunted house and to discover a number of hints and information before actually finding himself in front of the paranormal being. During this time, the ghost does not transmit a high number of social cues, or it does not transmit them at all. Besides that, if the horror video game is properly designed, the player would have a constant and increasing sensation that someone other is present in the environment with him. Limited and ambiguous cues such as a moving curtain, a quick shadow passing by or a faraway noise are perfectly sufficient to generate a strong sense of social presence. This example could be useful to introduce very different conceptions of social presence. Next in line are socio-constructivist approaches, namely theories ascribing social presence to users’ rather than media’s characteristics (Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997; Remesal & Colomina, 2013; Sung & Mayer, 2012). This approach emerged during the Nineties, and can be regarded as the “second phase” of the research on the social presence construct (Cui, Lockee, & Meng, 2013). Gunawardena and Zittle (1997) conducted research on social presence involving students in online-based learning courses, and found that users’ participation, sense of community, social learning and social presence itself can be high when social cues are low; they argued that students’ perception of social and human qualities in the medium depends on the ability of the moderators to create a sense of social presence. In this line, Rourke et al. (Rourke, Anderson, Garrison, & Archer, 1999) identified three indicators of social presence, namely affective (expression of emotion), interactive (signals of communication), and cohesive indicators (community building activities). From a different perspective, Polhemus and colleagues (Polhemus, Shih, & Swan, 2001) argued that social presence is enhanced by users’ communicative acts such as an expression of feelings, paralanguage, and humor. Again differently, in the context of Garrison’s conception of community inquiry (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) a somewhat “voluntary” idea of social presence emerges: it is defined as “the ability of participants in the Community of Inquiry to project their personal characteristics into the community, thereby presenting themselves to the other participants as real people” (p. 89). In this context, it seems that social presence is not related to the experience of media, rather it is some sort of “quality index” of social relationships. The problem with such conceptions is that they are not able to explain situations where one or more of the communicators are not capable of expressing real emotions and/or intentions, namely virtual agents. Cyberspace today is filled with digital entities able to imitate human communication more or less faithfully and realistically. Indeed, video games’ non-playable characters constitute an eminent example: they could generate a strong sense of social presence, and even the impression of being involved in meaningful and profound relations (Lim & Reeves, 2010; Triberti & Argenton, 2013). However, they are not able to adapt to human users’ behavior besides what is inscribed in their programming code. Indeed, social presence deserves to be understood on the basis of more complex conceptions of communication and media. In this sense, some important information comes from the field of communication studies.
Cues from Communication Studies Almost contemporary to the classic theories of social presence, computer mediated communication (CMC) emerged as a field of study. While CMC theories do not focus – and sometimes even mention directly – Social Presence, they somewhat identify some of the same features that classical theories did. One of the first CMC theories is the reduced social cues model (RSC), which classified any kind of online environment as ‘poor’, in terms of communicative capabilities, as the interactions within the medium do not allow an exchange of ‘social cues’ and feedbacks, resulting in people experiencing freedom from social norms and a state of status equalization, where all within the virtual environment are perceived as equal and communicative choices reflect this perception (Sproull & Kiesler, 1986). This conception can be easily considered similar to the first theorizations of social presence as media richness. The Social De-Individuation model (SIDE) criticizes the concept of status equalization and reduce the idea that the flaming phenomenon is widespread online: according to these authors, flaming is very much present in lab-based research contexts, where people have no link to each other and not as frequent in real online environments (Lea & Spears, 1991). Lea and Spears (1991) also say that even when non-verbal cues are absent – as in online environments – people use their interactional history, the type of situation they are in (e.g. Are they discussing a specific topic? Are they in a thematic forum?) and background information to gain knowledge about the person they are talking to: online environments are not ‘socially reduced,’as previously theorized. Another important feature is that people in online environments can categorize themselves and will behave according to their personal or social identity, depending on the situation: personal identity is supported when users interact as a single individual, while social identity is enacted when they act as members of specific groups (Lea & Spears, 1991). This specification is important because it highlights how people access different meanings about themselves and others according to context before acting accordingly. Walther (1996) argues that on the one hand models such as RSC are impersonal and consider ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) artifacts as the cause of social impoverishment and anonymity within interactive contexts; whereas, models such as SIDE are interpersonal and start to conceive online environment and mediated communication as effective, but not as efficient, as face to face interactions. CMC is vastly superior way of communication, according to the Hyperpersonal Model: socially richer and more desirable than face to face interaction (Walther, 1996). This is due to four elements of CMC: •
Receiver: Within a mediated communication process, the receiver of the message categorizes the other speakers to define their identities, even when little information is available. This information, in turn, is given predictive value about the senders’ identity and behaviors, even if it unconfirmed. If the interaction involves a group, then social categorization elements become salient over personal cues; if receiver and senders become close, then the influence of social identity cues diminishes.
•
Sender: For the sender, impression management is important: senders want the receivers to form a good image of them. CMC facilitate the amount of control that the sender has of their identityrelated cues and allows a selective self-presentation, though the use of language and other paralinguistic features.
•
Medium and its features: It is the medium that has specific technical features that the sender can exploit to enact a selective self-presentation. For example, blushing is an automatic communicative response: in virtual environments, the sender can decide if it is appropriate to communicate that they are blushing (through the use of an emoticon, for example) or omit this information.
•
Feedback: Feedback is important in mediated communication as it tends to be scarce, so there is less feedback that can pass through is used to manage the impression of the receiver and communicate content. It is a functional feedback loop that allows the senders and receivers alike to
try to create and confirm the self-presentation they are trying to convey and check on the content they want to transmit (Walther, 1996). It is evident that virtual environments are not considered inferior to other forms of interaction anymore. Reid (1991, 1994) and Bruckman (1992) see online worlds as narrative environments, where people speak to each other of basic social and emotional content, using real or pretend identities. Experimenting with identities is the leitmotif of the theories of mediated communication from the 90s and early 2000s. Turkle (1997) speaks of multiple personae that people can enact online according to the context, situation and actors. Following approaches, such as the Strategic Approach (Burkhalter, 1999; Donath, 1999), support the very similar idea that communication in virtual environments is a form of strategic interaction, during which the participants negotiate both their identities, information, aims and content, which they adjust according to one other. It is clear that for these theories, the focus is mainly on the communication process and social presence is taken for granted: the others present in a virtual environment are perceived when they can contribute – thanks to their feedback – to identity and sense making processes that involve all of us both (online and offline constantly). Others are present because they validate (or do not validate) our actions and selfpresentations.
Modern Theories As previously said, if virtual agents may generate in humans the sensation of being in the company of someone (e.g., see the haunted house video game example above), social presence probably deserves to be explained on the basis of more complex factors. Recent theories investigate a number of aspects that could lead to the sensation of being present with others inside a mediated environment. Biocca and colleagues’ studies on the topic (Biocca & Harms, 2002; Biocca, Harms, & Burgoon, 2003) provide a list of factors that possibly affect social presence, which is now more clearly conceptualized as a sensation and as the social counterpart of sense of (individual) presence, namely the feeling of being there which is a fundamental part of the user experience in virtual and mediated environments. Indeed, according to Biocca’s effort to identify the important factors to be considered while developing a theory of social presence, the “others” that generate such a sensation may also be artificial entities. Moreover, he recognizes that social presence is not inherently positive, in that mediated interactions can also be used to deceive and manipulate people, such as in online scams. Moreover, he maintains that, as well as a sense of presence, sense of social presence has its foundations in mechanisms relying in not-mediated interactions too; in other words, the “sensation of being with someone else” is not an epiphenomenon of technology use, rather it is an experience we could feel in everyday interactions too, when no communication technologies are involved. Biocca and colleagues (2003) identify multiple factors that seem able to influence sense of social presence: •
Sensory Awareness (i.e., perceiving another through the senses);
•
Mutual Awareness (i.e.: communicators are aware of the presence of each other; for example, also a corpse may be sensory-perceived through the senses, but it is not aware of the presence of who is perceiving it);
•
Access to Intelligence (i.e.: there are clues of intelligent behavior. For example, enemies who are hiding in a first-person shooter video game: one can’t see them physically, but he can detect the presence of a trap because of changes within the environment);
•
Salience of interpersonal relationship (i.e.: the relationship between the communicators is more or less important to them);
•
Intimacy and Immediacy (i.e., medium characteristics influencing opportunities for communication, as in Short and colleagues’ theory);
•
Mutual Understanding (i.e., communicators have the ability to comprehend each other’s communicative acts);
•
Behavioral Engagement (i.e., inter-agency or collaboration).
On the one hand, Biocca’s contribution helps to understand the complexity of social presence. In terms of design guidelines, this conception is open to different clues and modalities to promote and/or hinder the experience of social presence, such as exploiting one or more of the factors possibly impacting on it. On the other hand, this vision does not identify the crucial factor generating social presence. Although it seems reasonable that a sense of social presence is influenced by multiple factors, it is not clear how a simple “sensation” may emerge from a complexity of aspects. Indeed, if social presence is a sensation, it probably does not emerge from the computation and elaboration of a multiplicity of indexes present or not present in the environment. A sensation is an elementary mental process, usually “awareness of the bare quality of experience that arises directly from stimulation of a sense organ” (Aggarwal, 2002, p. 289). For this reason, when a mental process is qualified as a “sensation," it should be connected to the detection of a limited set of stimuli, rather than to the cognitive elaboration of complex properties. So, given that multiple factors could influence a sense of social presence (for example, augmenting or softening it over time), it would be interesting to find an account of the phenomenon connecting it to a specific mechanism. The recent presence and social presence theory by Riva (Riva, 2008; Riva, Mantovani, Waterworth, & Waterworh, 2015) could be useful to this aim. Riva’s (2008) account of social presence is strongly connected to his own theory of sense of presence (Riva, Mantovani, Waterworth, & Waterworh, 2015; Triberti & Riva, 2016): the latter is defined as the result of the impression of being able to enact one’s own intentions in a real or virtual environment. Indeed, this conception explains how users may feel present inside digital environments with limited technological features (e.g.: limited graphic quality and digital information), because they feel able to use the environment’s affordances to perform their actions as they want to. Conversely, according to Riva, a sense of social presence is established when one is able to recognize the others’ intentions within a given environment. Finding cues in the environment which can be related to others’ course of actions (e.g., footprints on the sand of a beach, a written note on a table, a door left opened) are sufficient to induce a sense of social presence, even if a complete social interaction has not been initiated yet. This conception can be deepened by considering the concept of social information (S.I.), or any information related to the presence, action and interaction of more than one entity within a given environment. In the context of mediated interactions, three types of social information can be recognized (Davide, Triberti, & Collovà, 2014): •
Action/command-conveyed S.I., or what the communicators do in the environment (e.g., uploading a content in a course; attacking in a game; changing background color in a web chat; etc.).
•
Media-conveyed S.I., or what the communicators say in the environment (e.g., writing in a web chat; talking in a telephone call; etc.)
•
Profile-conveyed S.I., or any information present in the environment about the communicators but independent of their here-and-now behavior (e.g., profile content in a social network; nickname and photo in a web chat; avatar in a video game; etc.).
From the point of view of Riva’s theory (Riva, 2008; Riva et al., 2015), such information does not generate a sense of social presence “directly,” rather they do in virtue of the fact that they can be interpreted by a communicator as indications of another’s intentional behavior. As a consequence, a sense of “being with other selves” emerges when some information received by the environment can be perceived as a result, or better as a trace, of someone other’s will, according to the natural tendency humans have to recognize intentional conducts within the external environment (Dennett, 1989).
Insights from Theories of Mediated Social Interaction Suchman (1993; 1987) theorized that actions are not exclusively an enactment of a pre-established plan made within the mind of the individual, but are born from the adjustment between an individual with their own aims and an environment offering boundaries and opportunities to achieve such aims. Any behaviors, including interactive ones, are the result of smart exploitation of circumstances offered by the context. Individuals are autonomous social actors that are moved by the need to communicate, who they are and the content of their message. Mantovani (1995, 1996) suggested that finding out the effect of communicative behaviors within an environment is not necessarily important: the focus should be on the interactional context and on the way such context influences the way individuals present themselves within the interaction and give meaning to their own behaviors. The context is therefore not just physical – or digital, as in the case of mediated communication – but also symbolic, and subjected to re-interpretation and reinvention. Context is to be considered on three different levels: I. Situation, as in the general social context in which the action takes place; II. Social norms, which manage and regulate everyday interactions; III. Artifacts, which mediates the interaction between people and the environment. It is clear that this theory (called TAS – Theory of Situated Action) definitely establishes that virtual environments are not just communicative channels, but they are social spaces that have their own cultures and rules, and contribute directly to give shape to the interaction individuals have. With regard to this topic, it is useful to mention the difference between ‘cyberspaces’ and ‘cyberplaces’ . On the one hand, ‘Cyberspace’ is defined as a set of material (hardware) and digital (software) tools that enhance the individual’s psychological space. On the other hand ‘cyberplaces’ are environments made of socially coconstructed meanings, that include a symbolic dimension about what is experienced within a cyberspace (Brivio, Cilento Ibarra, & Galimberti, 2010; Waskul, 2003). Cyberplaces are a place of interaction with others, as it relates to the results and the process of creating a meaningful shared world (Galimberti, 2011; Galimberti, Brivio, Cantamesse, & Cilento Ibarra, 2010). It is important to remember that while every mediated environment is a cyberspace, they may not be a cyberplace at the same time. Cyberplaces are where identity and meaning are co-constructed during an interactional process called Enunciative Intersubjectivity (Galimberti, 2011). Within a cyberplace, full potential (intersubjectivity) is reached when: I. Actors can actualize and create their own identity in interaction (subjectivity) and recognize their respective effort in this activity; II. Actors define conclusively how to manage their own interaction and relationship; III. Actors define the object of their interaction and IV. The way to talk about the object (Galimberti, 2011). Both TAS and the enunciative intersubjectivity model include social presence in their theorization of mediated communication: Social Presence is both a requirement and a product of the interactive process between people within an environment: enunciative co-presence, are seen as the result of a communicative exchange in which the interlocutors are able to influence each other’s actions and imbue the exchange with value (Galimberti & Riva, 2001).
LESSONS LEARNED ON SOCIAL PRESENCE At the end of this theoretical excursus, it is possible to critically reflect on the main theories of Social Presence. Indeed, such theories do not just provide important hints to understand what social presence is and how it works only. It also implies (more or less explicitly) how social presence should be observed/measured and which specific aspects of the user experience, technology or environment should be taken into consideration by designers in order to improve the impression of “being with others” inside a given context. Table 1 includes a schematic summary of the theories described so far. The more “classic” theories treat social presence as a medium feature, or in other words the “sense of being in company of others” as related to the properties of the technologies themselves, not of the communicators or their relationships. Such technologies are designed or engineered to manipulate technical features to increase the
transmission and perception of communicational indexes. For example, media including interface devices able to reproduce non-verbal communicational acts were considered more prone to promote a high level of social presence in their users (Short et al., 1976). Next in line are multiple approaches that can be defined as “constructivist” in that they sustain that social presence is created by the users themselves. Thus, the devices involved in communication could be limited in their features, but the quality of social relationships established (possibly developing outside the mediated interaction as well) affect the ability of the users to feel engaged in the occurring communication. In this conception, design guidelines for social presence regard social empowerment more than technological features. Proposals emerging in more recent times consider social presence as a psychological phenomenon, namely a sensation. “Sense” of social presence is the result of the detection of specific clues inside the digital environment, those that can be related to the behavior of other entities. In these theories, the other feels present with him/herself inside the environment may be also artificial entities. Moreover, the sense of social presence is not limited to mediated interaction, but is depicted as a fundamental psychological process existing in real and everyday life environments too. According to Biocca and colleagues (2003), such process depends on multiple factors, while Riva (2008) reconnects it to social information attesting someone other’s intentions. In this context, design guidelines that improve the sense of social presence are not related specifically to media features nor the quality of relationship, rather they emphasize the importance of the content of the digital/virtual environment. Other recent models instead see social presence as reciprocal presence (Cantamesse, 2008), that is, the dialogical (communicative) level that allows a full intersubjectivity through the co-construction of meanings (Galimberti, 2011; Galimberti et al., 2010). This brief theoretical review shows that social presence can be contextualized in quite different ways, and highlight the need for a complex approach to the phenomenon of interest. The next section will briefly explore innovations in communicational media scenarios, possibly influencing social presence studies in the future.
Table 1. Theoretical proposals on social presence along with methods and design guidelines. Theory/approach to Social Presence (SP)
Methods
Design guidelines (how to promote/augment social presence)
Technologies/media of interest
Selected reference(s)
SP depends on “degree of salience of the other person in the interaction and the consequent salience of the interpersonal relationships”
Measuring “intimacy and immediacy”
Preferring media with high level of intimacy and immediacy affordances
Traditional media (e.g., telephone vs. video)
(Short et al., 1976)
SP is a direct function of the number of social cues exchanged between the communicators (media richness)
Analyzing and counting the number of social cues that technology allows to be transmitted from one communicator to another
Increasing number of social cues and/or of devices to transmit them
Traditional media; Computer-mediated communication (CMC)
(Daft and Lengel, 1986)
SP depends on users’, not media’s, Investigating users’ characteristics (e.g.: quality of representation of the relationships) ongoing or experienced mediated interactions
Empowering the quality of social relationships among the users
Computer based learning
(Gunawardena and Zittle, 1997; Rourke et al., 1999)
SP is given by the social cues that manage to pass through a reduced bandwitdh medium
Increasing number of social cues and/or of devices to transmit them
Computer mediated communication (chat, forum)
(Sproull & Kiesler, 1986)
Investigating communication processes
SP serves as background, characteristics of sender, receiver, message and medium
Investigating communication processes
Allowing the user to select how to communicate their message and their selfpresentation (e.g. providing multiple communication channels)
Computer mediated communication (chat, forum)
(Walther, 1996)
SP serves as background, the other Observations, online is perceived when they become ethnography of interlocutors and provide feedback communicative exchanges to the sender, contribute to sense making processes
Supporting the feedback loop Computer mediated and allowing the user to communication (chat, select how to communicate forum, MOOs, MUD) their message and their selfpresentation/identity and meaning (e.g. providing multiple communication channels)
(Reid, 1992, 1994; Turckle, 1997)
SP is a sensation emerging from different factors, namely sensory awareness, mutual awareness, access to intelligence, salience of interpersonal relationship, intimacy and immediacy, mutual understanding, behavioral engagement
The level of any specific factor should be taken into consideration, especially in specific cases (e.g., measuring SP when one is in company of digital entities)
(Biocca et al., 2003; Novak & Biocca, 2003)
Probably including multiple possible methods depending on which factors one wants to detect/analyze
Computer-mediated environments; Virtual Reality
SP level depends on how much one is able to feel/understand others’ intentions inside an environment
Quantitative and qualitative research methods focused on the impression of perceiving others’ intentions
The environment should be filled with evident “traces” and indexes of others’ present and past actions
Real and digital environments
(Riva, 2008; Riva, Mantovani, Waterworth, & Waterworh, 2015)
SP is the background, others are perceived when are active and contribute to co-construct the environment
Qualitative assessment through ethnography
The environment should be show evident “traces” of the actors’ present and past actions.
Computer mediated communication; real environment
(Suchman, 1993)
SP as reciprocal presence, a dialogical exchange resulting in full intersubjectivity and coconstruction of meaning between actors, bound by the limits of the environments
Qualitative assessment through ethnography, netnography, conversation analysis
The environment should be Real and digital designed to show evident environments “traces” of the actors’ present and past actions, support the feedback loop and allowing the actors to select how to communicate their message and their subjectivity and to negotiate meanings.
(Galimberti, 2011; Cantamesse, 2008; Galimberti et al., 2010)
NEW FRONTIERS ENVIRONMENTS
FOR
ENHANCED
SOCIAL
PRESENCE
IN
LEARNING
Social presence is strongly and positively linked to a student’s performance, perceived learning and satisfaction in online learning environments (Caspi & Blau, 2008; Richardson, Maeda, Lv, & Caskurlu, 2017). Given these premises, it is important to reach an advanced comprehension of social presence and its role in mediated learning, as well as in other practices relying on the advancement of technology and media. Indeed, mediated learning is one of the contexts of study in which social presence has been explored more extensively, at least in its importance and utility (Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997; So & Brush, 2008). It has been said that social presence is one of the most important factors to enhance online interaction, which is the major vehicle of social learning (Tu, 2000). However, the majority of these studies are centered on traditional Computer-Mediated Communication, typically based on web-chat, web forums and online platforms for learning. Nowadays, ICTs develop quickly and mediated learning could be deeply modified by the introduction of innovative resources in the future. Here, we briefly speculate about possible innovations for the mediated learning of the future, outlining mediated learning environments that may influence the way we look at the phenomenon of social presence. As first, virtual reality is becoming more and more a commercial product with the rise of dedicated devices for video game playing such as the HTC VIVE, Oculus and Playstation VR. Moreover, tools such as Google Cardboard are making such technology inexpensive and potentially accessible to anyone holding an adequate mobile phone. This certainly enhances the opportunity to include immersive 3D simulations in the context of learning. Virtual worlds (Triberti & Chirico, 2016) are connected to the field of Virtual Reality and are of interest to the study of social presence. Virtual worlds allow users to share the experience of interactive virtual environments thanks to the creation, customization and use of avatars (Morie & Chance, 2011). “Classic” examples of virtual worlds are Second Life and Active Worlds. Virtual worlds combine immersive environments with shared experience and peer support. Moreover, they are “persistent,” in that these worlds do not stop existing and functioning after a participant has left. Loke (2015) identified four reasons why virtual worlds constitute an extraordinary opportunity for mediated learning: 1.
Users have the occasion to reflect on the events and the activities depicted in the virtual environment;
2.
Users have the occasion to engage into verbal interactions and non-verbal interaction with others (thanks to the use of avatars), so they are able to share ideas and information;
3.
Users are likely to perform problem solving when managing virtually-simulated issues;
4.
Users benefit of vicarious learning, in that they are able to see and imitate other people (or at least the digital representations of them) performing desirable actions and decisions.
Another field of interest for possible future innovations in mediated learning is ambient intelligence, namely technologies surrounding users in their everyday environment and ubiquitous computing supporting their activities (Cook, Augusto, & Jakkula, 2009; Triberti & Barello, 2016). Machine learning is of interest here. Indeed, technologies based on sensors and computing should be able to analyze and understand users’ behavior in order to facilitate, support and enhance the outcomes of activities and user satisfaction (Doctor, Hagras, & Callaghan, 2005). In this sense, understanding social presence may provide important hints to reproduce it in machines through artificial intelligence, so that the technologies of the future would be able to sense the presence of people and/or other entities in the environment they continuously monitor and modify. On the other hand, ambient intelligence presents opportunities for the mediated learning of people.
For example, a given task may be made more or less challenging online, based on the psychophysiological analysis of a user’s state (e.g.: stress or boredom); or, considering an example of interest for social presence, the existence of others (being actual people or artificial entities) in a mediated environment can be made more or less salient at a given moment, depending on the user currently being currently focused on shared or individual tasks for learning. Next in line is augmented reality, which could be very promising in learning contexts: augmented reality is realized when a technological device (such as smartphones) is used to put a computer-generated image between the individual and their view of the world, creating a more complex reality. This kind of technology can enhance and can create a manifold situation for learning and poses a question about how social presence may work in a ‘edge environment’, “neither completely online nor completely offline, in continuous presence of technology” (Galimberti & Brivio, 2013; Strada, Brivio, & Galimberti, 2013). Although some of these ideas are probably futuristic, they show how our comprehension of social presence deserves to be deepened, in order to develop methods to analyze and manipulate it for enhancing learning practices and outcomes.
IMPLICATIONS As postulated by Aragon (2003), there are different groups of individuals that can help create and support social presence in online environments: first, course designers, with the process of designing an entire course that should be focused on creating social presence, both by providing the right technology and by designing the right activity (e.g. collaborative learning activities) for the class, as we saw that interactions among individuals generate meaningful exchanges. Secondly, instructors giving feedback and prompt answers, and using communication (both in themes and in language) personalized to the individuals can jump start a sense of presence. Finally participants, as previously said regarding instructors, have to actively contribute to the learning environment by engaging in the learning activities. The significance of these recommendations can be easily connected to the kind of social presence theorized by the TAS and the enunciative intersubjectivity model. To these three groups, we should add ICT designers and programmers. Some suggestions can be found in Table 1, according to the social presence theory of reference. In general, technologies should be designed according to the specific context of learning and making use of media properties at the highest possible level. In this sense, the mere “quantity” of social indexes (for example: non-verbal behavior) is no more a huge issue for mediated communication and learning, in that new technologies allow to represent graphical representations of users and their behavior (for example: avatars and activities in 3D digital environments). Conversely, user activities should be represented in meaningful ways in order to promote cooperation and inter-agency. Users should be able to understand others’ intentions based on their usage of interactive affordances present in the environment.
FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS According to the present review, future research on the phenomenon of social presence should be grounded in current technological advancement, or rather it should be able to account for complex situations where social presence as a specific psychological perception may occur. Undoubtedly, these include: • • • •
Subjects feeling the presence of multiple entities at a time; Subjects feeling the presence of others in ambiguous situations, both in computer mediated and real-life environments; Subjects feeling the presence of others while in company of unreal and/or virtual entities (e.g., androids, virtual agents); Machine learning, or in other words the replication of sense of social presence in artificial entities, that should be able to analyze users’ behavior in order to support their activities and enhance final outcomes (ambient intelligence).
CONCLUSION While social presence is very relevant for effective learning in technology mediated environments, it is also true that pursuing a high level of social presence and its associated costs may not always be the most viable or efficient solution (Cui et al., 2013). The best that can be done is to give instructors and participants the technological and communicative skills needed to foster the right amount of social presence needed for the situation they are in. The previously explained theories tells us that this can be achieved by using the factors that impact on social presence. Classic theories taught us that social presence is influenced by device augmentation and the relative ability to transmit social indexes. However, social constructivist approaches and communication studies stated that the quality of relationships among communicators can be improved independently of the communicative interactions mediated by technology. Thismeans that people perceive higher levels of social presence if they are involved/engaged in meaningful shared activities and a mutual recognition of themselves as social actors. Finally, modern theories of social presence highlight that this construal is sensitive to information related to others’ intentions: if the users in the digital environments are able to detect clues in the environments itself (e.g.: traces and effects of others’ actions, symbols, an engaging narrative as context…), they are more prone to feel the presence of other selves, even if actual interactions have not been initiated yet. While Aragon (2003) and Cui and colleagues (2013) recommended a more systematic approach addressing the problem of designing online social presence, we can say that nowadays, we are still “far lagging behind the research of social presence measurement and its effectiveness” on this matter (Cui et al., 2013, p. 680). This chapter sought to start addressing this matter and provide solid theoretical bases to reflect and imagine how present and future mediated learning contexts can benefit from thought out and designed social presence experiences.
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KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Ambient Intelligence: Technological applications embedded in the physical environment and surrounding the users, that monitor and analyze users’ behavior in order to support their activities. Intersubjectivity: Unique combination of the individuals’ contribution created in a specific social context at one specific moment; it is the process of creating a shared world of meanings for the individuals to act in. Reciprocal Presence: A dialogical exchange resulting in full intersubjectivity and co-construction of meaning between actors, bound by the limits of the (virtual) environment where the interaction takes place. Self-Presentation: Parts of the individual’s identity (personality traits, aims and objectives, etc.) that the individual may use to induce a positive image of themselves within their interlocutors’ mind, in a process called impression management. Self-presentation efforts can be accepted or rebuffed by others, thanks to the dialogical feedback loop that characterize every communicative exchange. Social Information: Any information attesting the presence, communication or action by others in a mediated or real environment. Social Presence: The sensation of being with other selves in a mediated or real environment. Virtual Worlds: Permanent virtual environments where multiple users can interact with each other thanks to the use of avatars.
