What social capital can tell us about social presence

Scholars have long argued that learning is simultaneously an individual and social process (Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989). This understanding is particularly important as it “reconceptualizes learning from an in-the-head phenomenon to a matter of engagement, participation, and membership in a community” (Nasir & Cooks, 2009, p. 42). Research suggests that social interactions in learning communities play an equally important role in online education. For instance, literature indicates significant correlations between interactions and course grades (Shea, Fredericksen, Pickett, Pelz & Swan, 2001), satisfaction (Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997), overall performance (Picciano, 2002) and perceived level of learning (Rovai, 2002). Social presence is the concept by which scholars have studied social aspects of online learning. Much online learning research posits that social presence supports formation of relationships and exchange of information (Oztok & Brett, 2011). Interactions and social ties can profoundly affect collaboration (Ares, 2008), participation (Suthers, 2006), knowledge (Tee & Karney, 2010) and meanings (Arvaja, 2012) in a learning community. That said, although we understand the importance of social presence in terms of individual benefits, we know relatively little about how social presence plays a role in the formation of social ties or interactions within a community. What is the relationship between social presence and types of social relations and interaction patterns?

Addressing this gap is important for our understanding of social presence for two reasons. First, an online learning community is not a coherent or homogeneous entity consisting of individuals having shared interests (Oztok, 2013). Therefore, we cannot assume that individuals will have similar social experiences in their interactions within a community. Second, individuals are located in the webs of various social networks and hold certain positions in a social structure (Hodgson & Reynolds, 2005); thus, it would be erroneous to assume that different types of social relations are established, valued or desired equally.

Here, we offer a conceptualization of social presence using social capital theory. Because the central tenet for social capital theory is that different relationships within networks of people hold different values (Dika & Singh, 2002), we argue that it can inform the ways by which the perceived level of social presence is understood with respect to interaction patters. We argue that this nuanced understanding of social presence may contribute to the ways in which we conceptualize, measure and understand the ways that social presence mediates between individuals and their communities.