Perception of Social Presence in Asynchronous and Synchronous Online Discussion from The Perspective of Native and Non-Native Speaker

Abstract

The technology innovation of telecommunication gave confidence to educational institutions to substitute some of their courses from traditional courses into virtual ones. This switch in education inspired globalization. The learners use either synchronous or asynchronous communication tools to interact with each other. Most previous studies in this field show that social presence is correlated with learner achievement satisfaction and interaction. So the researcher measured the level of social presence for both groups of learners, native and nonnative speakers, across both types of online communication, synchronous and asynchronous communication. The researcher conducted a 2x2 split-plot ANOVA design with repeated measure for this study. The four cells in this design help the researcher to find how every group differs in both discussion formats. The findings of this study will lend a hand to institutions, instructional designers, instructors, and software and hardware developers to improve and concentrate on preferable methods of communication for global virtual institutions. The researcher did not find a statistically significant difference between native and nonnative speakers across the methods of online communications. There was no statistically significant difference between the learners in general across the methods of online communications. But the reported low level of agreement toward the level of social presence in both methods of online communication emphasizes the importance for all people who are concerned about virtual education to work hand in hand to elevate the level of social presence in online learning.The researcher encourages those who are concerned about online learning, and education in general to be the early adopters of technology such as Smartphone applications and the advanced features of social networking such as Facebook and Google wave.