Engaging university students in online learning: a regional comparative study from the perspective of social presence theory

This study investigates the factors influencing university students' online learning engagement from three distinct aspects, namely, behavioural, cognitive and emotional engagement. A comparison is drawn from university students in Asia who embraced online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. An online survey was conducted on 495 university students in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Malaysia during the surge of the COVID-19 Omicron variant, which was considered more infectious but less deadly than previous variants. A consistent positive relationship between Satisfaction and Academic Performance is found in all the regions. Malaysia presents a unique situation as compared to Mainland China and Hong Kong whereby no association was found between Social Context and Online communication towards Student Engagement. The novelty of this study is attributed to the integration of Social Presence Theory in Student Engagement through the nature of online learning as a coping strategy to halt the spread of COVID-19 during the Omicron variant surge. © 2023, Beijing Normal University.

Nurturing Social Presence in a Blended Learning Environment

The ambition of this development study is to explore the opportunity to put the knowledge gained during the COVID-19 pandemic into practice in a blended, post-COVID, learning environment. The focus is to explore how a combination of digital and face-to-face activities may allow for fostering social presence among undergraduate students. The Social Presence model and the five elements of Affective Association, Community of Cohesion, Instructor Investment, Interaction Intensity, and Knowledge and Experience, encompass the theoretical framework of the study. The contextual setting is the first course of The Marketing Programme at Linnaeus University in Sweden, a bachelor program with a 50% Swedish intake and 50% international intake. Given the diverse background of the students in this course, challenges are typically encountered in relation to community building. Empirical data was collected during the fall of 2022 among the enrolled students using an online questionnaire. While the results from this study should be seen as preliminary, they offer an inspiring glimpse of how to nurture social presence in a blended learning environment. Copyright © 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Perceptions of university students regarding engagement in synchronous discussions involving teamwork during the COVID-19 pandemic

Teamwork is usually a component of the learning assessment framework of online courses, and the timely sharing of information and feedback through synchronous communication is beneficial for team-based assignments. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, university students did not always actively engage in virtual teamwork in online environments because they were learning from home and were subject to the effect of disruptions at home. This study explored the perceptions of university students who engaged in synchronous discussions involving teamwork during the COVID-19 pandemic. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with 25 Taiwanese university students. Through qualitative methods that incorporated individual interviews and a content analysis, six content concepts were established. Afterward, relational content analysis was conducted. This study revealed that the students benefited from visible synchronous discussions in terms of inquiry dialogue, project creation, and learning satisfaction. Notably, the interviewees mostly did not switch on their webcams but recognized that webcam use can benefit discussions. The participants' decision to switch on/off their webcams was primarily influenced by their perception of the importance of a given project than by their privacy concerns. Moreover, when home-based leaning was implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, group leaders encountered an obstruction when they were guiding their group members to engage in teamwork involving physical tasks. Future studies should explore how members should be guided to engage in teamwork involving physical tasks during synchronous discussions.

Social presence, synchrony, and personalization: challenges of online education in the post-pandemic university

During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a forced transition to the virtuality of face-to-face training proposals from universities. But what happened in those higher education careers that already had a distance modality? What lessons learned does the pandemic leave in the subjects that have already been developed online, mediated by digital technologies? In search of answers to these questions, a paradigmatic case study was completed: a distance career with a helping profile, accredited by a private Argentine university2. The research covered two phases: exploration and description, arriving at a categorization that dialogues with con-cepts of the theoretical framework. The data obtained reveals the installation of videoconference as a common practice in traditionally asynchronous spaces. The conclusions highlight the relationship of the categories: social presence and per-sonalization, with the situation of synchrony associated with presence. Everything seems to indicate that the return to normality does not constitute a return to the previous situation, but rather an opening to a transformative process that conso-lidates synchrony as a common practice in distance learning modality, and that causes -in terms of De Alba (2021)- a structural dislocation whose derivations must be mapped to broaden the understanding of the phenomenon.

Who Needs Zoom? Female Arab Students' Perceptions of Face-to-Face Learning and Learning on Zoom

Zoom has been adopted by Al-Qasemi Academic College of Education as an alternative to face-to-face teaching/learning since the outset of COVID-19. The study explores female students' perceptions of social presence, social interaction, and satisfaction in Zoom learning compared to face-to-face learning, along with the overall factors shaping their perceptions. All 228 participants were female students who learned via Zoom during the pandemic for at least one semester before switching back to face-to-face learning. A mixed-method design was used in the study, which included a questionnaire to learn about students' perceptions and semi-structured interviews to gain in-depth understanding of the factors affecting their attitudes. The results indicate that students' perceptions of social presence, social interaction, and satisfaction tended to be higher for face-to-face learning than Zoom learning. They also suggest a significant relationship between the students' satisfaction and their perceptions of social presence and interaction. Furthermore, the students' degrees and majors seem to have had a significant bearing on their level of satisfaction with Zoom learning. Finally, the findings of the thematic analysis of the interviewees' responses show that there were other factors influencing the participants' perceptions. Thus, an informed combination of face-to-face and Zoom learning is encouraged as a sustainable solution to enhance student satisfaction.

Teachers' and students' perceptions of a sense of community in blended education.

Universities have renewed interest in blended learning in preparation for post-COVID education. However, unsatisfactory social interactions hinder the quality of blended learning, despite its potential for flexible and personalized learning. In this situation, a sense of community would provide essential academic and social benefits. To develop a sense of community among students, we need to further understand students' and teachers' perceptions concerning this subject by exploring their experiences in blended learning. Therefore, we investigated this for three blended courses using a qualitative case study approach. We conducted: (1) classroom observation; (2) document analysis of course content, assignments, and assessments; and (3) individual interviews with teachers (n = 3) and group interviews with students (n = 18). The results showed the main factors that appeared to contribute to sense of community: group learning activities within courses, non-academic and extracurricular activities across courses, and the campus as a physical place integrating academic and social life after COVID. Further, we identified two obstacles: students valued group learning but struggled to manage group dynamics, and despite teachers' efforts to encourage learning autonomy, students viewed teachers as the ultimate authority in the learning process, which strained the student-teacher relationship. Additionally, this study revealed the limitations that digital tools have for promoting sense of community, as students questioned whether these tools have added value for supporting intricate and in-depth conversations. Finally, based on these findings, we provided practical recommendations for the future development of sense of community in blended learning.

Toward a new business model of retail industry: The role of brand experience and brand authenticity

While the customer-to-manufacturer (C2M) business model has received increasing attention as a new business model for e-commerce and retail industry, little is still known about it and the effect of its approach. This study aims to understand how brand-related stimuli in C2M environments affect customer responses as the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. The outcomes reveal that the Sensory, affective, and intellectual aspects of brand experience positively influence brand authenticity. Brand authenticity has a positive effect on behavioral intention, such as reuse intention and word-of-mouth. Additionally, this research finds that social presence moderates the association between the sensory aspect of brand experience. Thus, this study can suggest a C2M business model as a means of sustainable operation of the retail industry to both researchers and practitioners in relation to the retail industry.

Design to Improve Social Presence among University Students in Asynchronous Online Learning Environment

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, online lectures are becoming more common in higher education. Specifically, asynchronous online classes have become increasingly popular because of their flexibility. Asynchronous online courses, however, may negatively impact students' academic performance and social development due to the diminished sense of social presence. To explore ways to enhance social presence among students in asynchronous online classes, this paper used a co-design methodology that involved 12 undergraduate students as primary stakeholders. As a result, we developed a design framework for designing in-class interaction to promote social presence in asynchronous online lectures. This framework consists of four high-level elements and sub-categories: interaction topic (direct or peripheral topics related to learning), interaction size (small or entire group), interaction mode (anonymity, synchronicity, instructor involvement), and interaction motivator (lightweightness and entertainment). Our design framework may serve as a guide to future technology for improving asynchronous online classes. © 2023 Owner/Author.

Rethinking Distance and Presence Conceptions in Times of COVID-19 and Post-COVID-19: The Search for a New Educational Literacy

This work aims to deepen etymological, semantic, sociocultural and philosophical issues in relation to the concepts of distance and presence for their understanding of relevance and pertinence in the context of the current scenario of the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, it is intended to argue that the radical dichotomies of common sense around such concepts do more harm than good in the clarification necessary for taking decisions and attitudes that protect individuals and collective health and life. The coronavirus pandemic requires the need for a clear discernment, supported by philosophical and scientific knowledge, which lead to a change in a set of attitudes, values, perceptions and sensitivities in relation to responsible social distancing, often contaminated by discourses without argument or a solid knowledge base. From a methodological point of view, this work performs a reflexive theoretical incursion in an essay style form, whose objective is to formulate hypotheses about the role that the concepts of distance and presence acquire from the context of COVID-19 onward, and how they should also be positioned in the context of future pandemics that may happen. Of course, this requires a re-education in the treatment of such concepts in light of the act of caring, as well as concerns about health, well-being, the individual and social life. To deepen these aspects, the spirit of this work will be supported by theoretical references that intertwine philosophical questions about presence and distance associated with human values, such as: affection, ethics and solidarity, philosophical questions about the use of face masks, and how such concepts are discussed and related with the idea of caring for and protecting the health in the context of COVID-19. The goal of these reflective support structures is to deepen our discussion of philosophical issues in the face of attitudinal challenges, which will result from new social relations demanded during the COVID-19 pandemic period as well as the challenges that will emerge in response to the social habits that will have to become naturalized, with greater frequency, in the post-COVID-19 period. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Why do people shop? Understanding consumer e-commerce shopping intention in Indonesia: Mediating effect of shopping orientation

Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in the use of e-commerce as a shopping platform in Indonesia. This study aims to identify the factors that influences consumers' intention to shop through e-commerce platforms. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study uses a survey method to collect data from online shoppers in the 11-24 age range. The research model includes shopping orientation as a mediating variable. The data analysis reveals that perceived enjoyment, social norms, social presence, and perceiver utility positively and significantly affect e-commerce shopping intention. The study also identifies the mediating role of shopping orientation. Finding: The results shows that shopping orientation fully mediates the relationship between perceived utility and e-commerce shopping intention. Conclusion: The study highlights the importance of perceived enjoyment, social norms, social presence, perceived utility, and shopping orientation in driving e-commerce shopping intention. To increase perceived utility, e-commerce managers should provide information that emphasizes the convenience of shopping through their platforms. Finally, what can be implied from this study's results is how managers can increase the shopping orientation of potential consumers. Research Limitation: The study's sample is limited to consumers aged 11 to 24 years, where at that age, many people in Indonesia do not have good purchasing power. Future research should consider a more diverse sample. Additionally, the study only examines the full mediation of shopping orientation on the relationship between perceived utility and e-commerce shopping intention. Therefore, further research is recommended to examine whether shopping orientation is fully mediated in the relationship between perceived utility and e-commerce shopping intention. © 2023 by the authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Online cross-religion donation during COVID-19: mediating role of empathy and trust

PurposeMost donation-related studies have extensively examined in-group donation behavior, but it is difficult to find similar studies that consider donations to out-group members. This study aims to understand online cross-religion donation during COVID-19 in Indonesia.Design/methodology/approachThe online questionnaire is distributed using the purposive and snowball sampling technique. From July to August 2021, 753 respondents are obtained, comprising Muslims, Catholics, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and Confucian.FindingsThis study found that online cross-religion dona tion is strongly influenced by the social presence, trust in fundraiser and empathy. Interestingly, this study also reveals a partial mediation effect of trust in fundraiser and empathy in the relationship between social presence and online cross-religion donation. Future studies are encouraged to investigate and explore how care for others may affect online prosocial behavior.Originality/valueThis study provides two theoretical contributions. First, this study empirically evinced that charitable donation is blind to religious belief. Second, it promotes the mediating role of empathy and trust in fundraisers to improve online cross-religion donation.

(Dis)Connected: Establishing Social Presence and Intimacy in Teacher-Student Relationships During Emergency Remote Learning

In the effort to "flatten the curve" of the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers were required to adapt their curricula, pedagogy, and relationships with their students to remote learning structures. Using data gathered through an online qualitative survey of over 800 Chicago teachers in July 2020, this article will examine the ways that the shift to remote learning challenged teachers' relationships with their students during the spring of 2020. By utilizing social presence theory and considering the significance of emotional connection in teacher-student relationships, the study captures some of the relational challenges that teachers experienced during the initial months of remote instruction. The study identifies increased individualization, deeper holistic understandings of students, and a diversity of mechanisms of engagement as pedagogical techniques that allowed teachers to maintain and even improve their relationships with students.

The Value of Providing Online Students with Dedicated Affective Support, Particularly during Times of Crisis

In addition to academic support, the provision of dedicated affective support during a student's online learning journey has a significant impact on their emotional wellbeing and ability to remain engaged with their studies. This kind of support is even more essential during times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, during which students may feel isolated, vulnerable, and overwhelmed by the events taking place around them. This study reports on the value of such support provided by a dedicated affective support mechanism. Within a case study design, 34 participants were purposefully selected to collect data by using focus groups and individual online interviews. The Community of Inquiry framework guided the study. The findings revealed that although students' dependence on emotional support varied, they recognised that feeling the social presence of a dedicated person who was able to support them emotionally played a key role in their sense of connection to their online learning communities. Recommendations include the consideration of institutions offering online and distance education to plan for a dedicated third party focusing on the facilitation of a stronger sense of emotional connectedness and wellbeing.

Quality is more important than quantity: Social presence and workplace ergonomics control predict perceived remote work performance

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a widespread disruption to the way that we work. One of its lasting consequences will be the ubiquity of remote work. The effective use of collaboration tools is therefore a critical factor for information systems (IS) research when design the workplaces of the future. We theorize that social presence and workplace ergonomics control are important predictors of perceived performance. Moreover, we investigate how different factors (i.e., collaboration tool efficacy, mode of work, and number of meetings) influence social presence. Using survey data (N = 389), we provide evidence that workplace ergonomics control and social presence are indeed important for perceived performance. Surprisingly, we observe that only collaborative platform efficacy has a significant impact on social presence, and that neither the number of meetings nor the modality were significant factors. Based upon these results, we derive implications for theory and practice. © 2023 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.

Online religiosity in the COVID-19 pandemic

The period characterized by restrictions due to COVID-19 represented a unique opportunity to study completely new social phenomena. In fact, what was previously a possibility, such as entertaining activities through online media, become a forced condition to satisfy one's need for sociality and search for meaning. Starting from reflections about mediated interactions, social presence and online religiosity, this work focuses on a case study involving an evangelic religious community. In this context, the changing dynamics in the passage from <<real world to a <<virtual one, were analysed. The participants' words-gained through interview and focus group discussions-enabled to reconstruct the phases of online activities, the ambivalence about <<social presence as well as the opportunities and limits of online worship. As a consequence, the uniqueness of the place of cult for an authentic religious experience emerged. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (Italian) Il periodo di restrizioni legato al Covid-19 ha rappresentato un'occasione unica per studiare fenomeni sociali inediti: cio che prima era una possibilita, come svolgere attivita online, si tramuta in una condizione coatta per poter soddisfare i bisogni di socialita e di ricerca di senso. Partendo dalla riflessione sui temi dell'interazione mediata, della presenza sociale e della religiosita online, il presente lavoro offre un contributo di ricerca, mediante l'analisi del caso di una comunita religiosa evangelica, finalizzato ad indagare la molteplicita delle dinamiche che possono originarsi nel passaggio da un contesto <<reale a quello <<virtuale. Le parole dei partecipanti - raccolte mediante intervista al Pastore e focus group con i membri della comunita religiosa - consentono di ricostruire le fasi di implementazione dell'attivita online, l'ambivalenza legata alla <<presenza sociale nonche le opportunita e limiti del culto online, riflessioni dalle quali emerge la definizione del luogo di culto come cronotopo unico per un'esperienza religiosa autentica. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Enhancing Immersive User Experience Quality of StudoBot Telepresence Robots with Reinforcement Learning

The pandemic situation (Covid 19) brought new challenges in the education sector while simultaneously presenting unique opportunities for technology enabled services. The use of Mobile Robotic Telepresence systems in educational sector is promising as it provides means to significantly enhance the involvement and benefits to stakeholders involved in such interactions. An immersive user interaction with such a system depends on many aspects which are both static and dynamic. We approach the dynamic aspect of such interactions recognizing that the video and audio aspects of such a system will require fine tuning and adaptation. Closely related is the aspect of maintaining the necessary quality of network connection. Considering each of these aspects a reinforcement learning mechanism is incorporated to improve the overall user experience with such a system. A working system is built and experiments performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach. Reward generation matrix, a crucial piece of data gathering from the environment, takes about 45 minutes, offline training time is less than a second, while the robot is able to cover the workspace in slightly less than a minute. The system is not limited to educational sector alone and provides a foundational framework to extend the concepts and principles to adjacent markets. © 2023 IEEE.

Social presence as means to humanizing online classroom

Purpose: The previous coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has forced pre-service English teachers to conduct their teaching simulation virtually. In the context of online teaching, social presence is vital for effective learning. This skill is perceived as a way to humanize the online learning process. This article explores how social presence is represented in the pre-service teacher's synchronous online classroom and how the development of social presence enables the pre-service teachers to develop their students' well-being and thus humanize online classrooms. Design/methodology/approach: The current study draws upon case study research. The data were collected from (1) synchronous online teaching simulation recordings of pre-service English teachers from the Language Classroom Management course and (2) interview transcripts from three participants. Both data sources were transcribed, coded and analyzed. A two-step coding scheme for pre-service English teachers' social presence was adapted from the Community of Inquiry (CoI) coding template. Findings: This study reports that all the three social presence categories (i.e. cohesive, affective and interactive) emerged from their online teaching simulation. In addition, the development of social presence to humanize online classrooms from the pre-service teachers was found in these stages: (1) having a role model for teaching, (2) showing respect and being friendly and (3) adjusting the language of instructions to the students' level. Research limitations/implications: This study has been limited to the pre-service teachers in one university only. Therefore, this needs to be tested in wider settings and contexts. Practical implications: Theoretically, this study has added students' well-being as the element that connects social presence to the humanizing online classroom. Meanwhile, practically, in relation to teacher education, this paper also recommends the teaching stages leading to a more humanized online learning. Originality/value: Current studies tend to describe social presence in experienced teachers' asynchronous online classrooms. Rarely did the studies explore social presence as practiced by pre-service teachers in the context of synchronous videoconferencing class. Furthermore, there has also been limited research connecting social presence with humanized classrooms. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Challenges and Issues of Teaching and Learning during the Pandemic (COVID-19)

This study is conducted to investigate the effectiveness and readiness of teaching and learning among students during the pandemic (COVID-19) towards the online learning among hospitality and tourism students. A quantitative method was employed and students from the Faculty of Hotel and Tourism Management Penang Campus were chosen as the target sample. The sample size for this study was 430 and a total of 360 questionnaires were successfully collected with the return rate of 83.72%. Descriptive analysis was used to interpret the demographic data, Pearson Correlation analysis was employed to examine the correlation among variables, and multiple regression analysis was used to measure the overall relationship between independent and dependent variables. From these analyses, the three (3) variables (social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence) were found to have positive relationships with a student's learning experience. Overall, this study is important to fellow academicians, academic researchers, and practitioners in improving their methods of teaching and learning, assisting the students, and strengthening their teaching techniques in online learning.

Staying connected while physically apart: Digital communication when face-to-face interactions are limited

Theoretical and empirical work on digital media use and social connectedness has often considered face-to-face communication to be an available option. But how do various digital media uses relate to social connectedness when face-to-face communication is not, or much less, possible? Drawing on survey data from 2925 US adults during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, we find that different digital communication methods display different relationships with social connectedness under stay-at-home circumstances with limited in-person interactions outside the home. Overall, digital communication relates to lower social connectedness. In line with notions from social presence theory, especially digital media lower in social presence (e.g. email, social media, and online games, and to some extent text messaging) relate negatively to social connectedness, while this is not the case for higher social presence media (e.g. voice and video calls). Our study has implications for theorizing about digital media use and social connectedness in times when face-to-face communication is less available. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Graduate-level students' social presence experience in online classes: A qualitative descriptive design

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive design study was to understand how graduate-level students enrolled in online classes at a small Christian university in the Midwest described their social presence experience as operationalized in the various components of Whiteside's social presence model (affective association, community cohesion, instructor involvement, interaction intensity, and knowledge and experience). The theoretical framework appropriate for this study was the concept of social presence as it relates to the community of inquiry framework. The two research questions focused on how graduate-level students described their social presence experience and how they described what social presence is and looks like in online classes. The research questions were answered by using a purposive sampling technique to select participants. Semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were conducted with 13 graduate-level students enrolled in online classes at a small Christian university in the Midwest. Using MAXQDA and Braun and Clarke's thematic data analysis, the researcher organized, coded, and analyzed the data. The researcher deductively coded existing themes already present as reflected in the five factors of Whiteside's social presence model, and inductively determined emerging themes such as Comparison to In-Person Learning, Next Steps, COVID, Personality Type/Learning Style, Judgment of Social Presence, and Suggestions for Teachers. The researcher suggested the implementation of videoconferencing tools and the exploration of correlations between personality type and/or learning style with the perceptions of social presence experiences in online classes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)