Examining Social Presence's Influences Among Undergraduates in Online Learning Environment

Abstract

Activities related to teaching and learning (T&L) are crucial for ensuring that students achieve the necessary learning objectives. Two examples of T&L activities are lectures and group assignments. The method and styles of interaction employed by lecturers significantly affect the level of closeness and involvement. Covid-19 does indeed have a significant impact on student participation outside of classrooms and T&L practices, which is later moved to online learning. Online learning does have some disadvantages, one of which is social presence. This study's objective is to analyse the relationships between the variables that affect how students perceive their social presence and to identify the most important variables. A set of standardised questionnaires on sociability and social space, two factors affecting social presence, were distributed twice to respondents in similar groups to gather data for this study. The 79 data points are then statistically analysed and evaluated together as a whole. The study's findings demonstrate that these variables have a strong positive correlation with one another and have an impact on how students perceive social presence in an online learning environment.