Social Presence

Social presence online seems to be another fuzzy variable as it is a"perception" of learners without agreed definitions and measurement. In general, it relates to the awareness of another person, feeling of connectedness and community (Rettie,?). Psychologically, it involves degrees of salience, intimacy and immediacy (Sort, et al, 1976). Particularly, in an online environment it could include three dimensions: social context, online communication and interactivity (Tu, 2001). Finally, it is a cultural construct in that not only learners characteristics such as culture backgrounds could affect their perception of social presence online, but also technology (tool) use could en culture the sense of social presence.

Q1 for Tu (2000): Does culture difference plays a role in perceived social presence between Chinese and American learners? Is such difference still significant between younger generations (as a result of globalization and increased cross culture exchange)? or does it matter?

Q2 how the synchronous CMC, particularly the use of video conference in online learning may affect the perception of social presence? Does it has more influence on learners of a culture of higher dependence on contextual cues (non-verbal) ?

Cooperative and Collaborative Learning

Glen, a former Ed Tech graduate student, once provided a vivid explanation of the difference between the two in my interview of him. "Cooperative learning, " he said, "is more like `divide-and-conquer', while collaborative learning is more like `the butting of heads'. " When the busy graduate students are facing time constraints and multiple commitments, they are more likely to cooperate, or to get as much done in the given hours (efficiency), than collaborate, that is spending hours on arguing or negotiating before reaching a consent (effectiveness). So even though collaboration is desired, cooperation often dominates in reality.

Although the role of instructor was not a focus in the study by Curtis and Lawson(2001), I would argue that mediation of instructor plays an important part in promoting collaboration. When learners are experienced collaborative learners, instructor's mediation might be viewed as intrusive or even annoying, but when learners do not have the necessary collaborative learning skills, which is more often the case, assistance from instructors become critical. The questions then would be: to what extent do instructors need to provide help, and what types of help are most effective in which context?

Another question related to research method is how to analyze the threads of asynchronous online discussion postings and emails. Studies on CL more or less shared a similar theoretical foundation of collaborative/cooperative learning by Dillenbourg, Johnson and Johnson, etc., the coding and the following themes or categories could vary a lot.

Johnson and Johnson (1994) listed group processing as one of the five basic conditions for cooperative learning. Here they seemed to emphaszie the "positive" and "promtive" side of group processing, or group dynamics. Group processing could have other downside implications, too. In some samll group reasearch papers [i.e., Mejias (2005) ], process gains refer to the benefits such as group learning, synergy, while process losses may include dominance, evluation apprehension, information overload, production blocking, and of course, social loafing.

individual and social learning

Salomon and Perkins(1998) suggested that the concept of social learning could have 6 implications:1)active social mediation, or how individual learning is transformed by the external agent; 2)paricipatory knowledge construction, that is learners make sense of activities/material by dynamic participation and interaction in particular situation; 3)mediation by cultural scaffolding; surrounds (artifacts, symbols, tools,etc.) offering conditions of learning. 4)social entity, or learning as a collective agency; 5)learning to be a social learner; and 6) the learning of social content.
Are we born social or solo learners? When is it pure individual or pure social learning? I suppose we cannot simply draw a line as they are interwoven and coexisting most of the time. In past learners were viewed more like individuals and learning more like isolated effort, but theories based on the perspective couldn't explain the complextity of learning. Socio-cultural view of learning seems to fill the blanks in some ways.