Exploring the terms used for virtual presence in online education
Paul Kawachi
The Open University of China, CCRTVU Building,
160 Fuxingmennei Dajie, Beijing 100031, PR China kawachi@open-ed.net
ABSTRACT. In the literature of online education, there are more than a dozen terms employing the word presence now being used. These include Telepresence, Social Presence, Cognitive Presence, Emotional Presence, Absent Presence, and so on. However, only six of these are suggested here as being necessary and sufficient for learning. The others are discussed briefly. The six distinct desirable terms of presence occur each at specific stages in the narrative learning process. These are ‘unwrapped’ and explored here using a framework based on the Transactional Distance Model. The suggested six are (1) Institutional, (2) Learner, (3) Cognitive, (4) Social, (5) Transactional, and (6) Teaching Presence. They occur in this order during the learning process. A full literature meta-analysis is included.
RÉSUMÉ. Le mot « présence » figure dans plus d’une douzaine d’expressions dans les travaux concernant l’enseignement à distance en ligne. Parmi ces expressions figurent télé-présence, présence socio-affective, présence cognitive, présence émotionnelle, présence absente (ou présence à distance), et ainsi de suite. Toutefois, seules six de ces « présences » sont ici suggérées comme étant suffisantes et nécessaires dans le processus d’apprentissage. Les autres sont brièvement discutées. Ces six « présences » nécessaires se manifestent à des étapes spécifiques dans le développement linéaire de l’apprentissage. Ces expressions sont ici exposées et explorées, en utilisant un cadre fondé sur le modèle de la distance transactionnelle. Six d’entre elles sont suggérées comme nécessaires ; (1) présence institutionnelle, (2) présence de l’apprenant, (3) présence cognitive, (4) présence socio- affective, (5) présence transactionnelle, (6) présence pédagogique. Elles se manifestent dans cet ordre lors du processus linéaire d'apprentissage. L’auteur inclut une méta-analyse détaillée des travaux actuels (ou : de la littérature actuelle) sur le domaine.
MOTS-CLÉS: présence, modèle de la distance transactionnelle, présence virtuelle, formation en ligne.
KEYWORDS: presence, transactional distance model, virtual presence, online education.
DOI:10.3166/DS.9.591-609 © Cned/Lavoisier 2011
Introduction
This paper reviews all the various terms of presence used in online education, and explains how six are essential. These are positioned within the narrative learning process using the Transactional Distance Model. This model is underpinned by the theory of transactional distance, conversation theory, and the constructionism view of interactions carrying knowledge. The Model is well recognized in open and distance education as the basis for praxis. Telepresence and the various other terms of virtual presence are important to online education since the quality of distance education can be measured by the degree that the student is absorbed in the learning task, and not absorbed or distracted by the physical environment. A full meta- analysis has identified the six and only six distinct types that are essential to online education: Institutional Presence, Learner Presence, Social Presence, Cognitive Presence, Transactional Presence, and Teaching Presence.
These are differentially defined and situated at a specific stage of the learning process, using the Transactional Distance Model as the framework. This Paper reports when and how each is created, and notably in the case of Social Presence when it is to be reduced so that the learning process can move on to new collaborative interactions. Findings also suggest how these can be each measured in situ. Optimally, self-report questionnaires can guide the student to understand exactly what she should be attending to. Keeping the student focused and fully absorbed in the task at hand is fundamental to achieving efficient and high quality learning. These findings should be of interest to all researchers and practitioners working in or exploring the use of avatars in virtual or augmented worlds as well as to those developing web-based courseware, television and radio for the future.
Methods
Presence is defined as being in the immediate proximity spatially and this is extended now to include conscious proximity imaginatively; prior to telephones and other forms of computer-mediated communications, presence meant being in a physically defined place, for example in a physically-shared room with another person, and now using computer-mediated communications the term presence is defined as also meaning feelings constructed in the mind that someone else is being considered in one’s consciousness or imagination. Various terms employing the word presence are now used in the literature on education - particularly in discussing computer-mediated communications in online distance education. These have included Telepresence, Online Presence, Web Presence, Institutional Presence, Learner Presence, Learning Presence, Social Presence, Cognitive Presence, Transactional Presence, Teacher Presence, Teaching Presence, Emotional Presence, and even Absent Presence. (This is an exhaustive list as far as can be done given the rapidly expanding field and development of telepresence technologies for learning including virtual worlds and augmented reality.) Not all of these are essential to the
learning process. Indeed, only six of them are necessary and sufficient. These six distinct kinds of presence in the learning process are discussed next using a framework based on the Transactional Distance Model.
The six suggested terms for presence
There are only six forms of presence suggested here as being needed for learning.
The others are discussed and discounted below. The essential six are (1) Institutional, (2) Learner, (3) Cognitive, (4) Social, (5) Transactional, and (6) Teaching. They occur or should be invoked in this order during the learning process.
These six essential forms of presence are located to specific Stages of the four-stage Transactional Distance Model involving Structure and educative Dialogue (Figure 1) as the framework of the learning process. The findings are rigorous, and useful to understand presence for education, when to use which type of presence, and why.
Briefly, Institutional Presence covers most of the learning process, but not enveloping totally the student. Learner Presence starts with Cognitive Presence on the first day on campus or just prior when packing books and computer to take to the campus - for online students when choosing the computer to use and going online to log-in for the first time at the institution, becoming mentally alert to tackle the foreseeable learning tasks. Social Presence quickly comes into play early on for self- introductions and to reduce any anxieties to allow learning to begin. Once some Structure is imposed by the Institution, then Transactional Presence develops to reduce Structure and increase educative Dialogue with the Teaching Presence coming in centrally to guide the learning process. These are clearly illustrated in Figure 2 showing their interrelationships, and ordering in the learning process.
Teachers and students should find this meta-analysis effective and useful in their metacognitive understanding of learning.
The Transactional Distance Model
The four-stage framework of the Transactional Distance Model (Figure 1) forms the necessary background to understanding presence in online education. This model has been validated and discussed elsewhere (Kawachi, 2003a; Kawachi, 2007; Feng and Zhang, 2008). Briefly the narrative learning process is explained according to Stage. Stage 1 (S- D-) is at maximum transactional distance for the student, Stage 2 (S+ D-) is closer, and the student engages institutionally imposed Structure, Stage 3 (S+ D+) is nearer to achieving the learning task, when some educative Dialogue is now involved to help the student consider all possible alternatives, and Stage 4 is closest at minimum transactional distance where the student has adopted new knowledge and is testing this out to finally learn.
In Stage 1, learning occurs in a group cooperatively, gathering and sharing information and fostering a learning community. Here synchronous-mode computer-
mediated communications are best such as chat and conferencing. This Stage 1 can be characterised by self-introductions (as a prelude to being a source of content material to other students), brain-storming (limited at this Stage 1 to only accumulating new ideas, yet to be argued in Stage 2), involving divergent thinking to gather various different perceptions in order to explore and to frame each student’s context, and helping each other as equals with projecting content especially in sharing personal experiences and past literature that has been read, which constitute old foundational knowledge. The transactional distance initially is at a maximum (S- D-) with no imposed Structure and no educative Dialogue.
Figure 1. The four stages of the Transactional Distance Model
In Stage 2, lateral-thinking (creative thinking around the problem) is used to generate and develop metaphors (an idea or conception that is basically dissimilar but formed from noting similarities between the initial information and the new concept) or new ideas, and these supported by argument. Students discuss for example their own problem they have found which has brought them to participate in the current course, and then argue to identify possible solutions to each other’s problems. Creative thinking here may derive from combining seemingly disparate parts especially ideas contributed from others in different contexts into a new synergic whole. The teacher is still keeping academically at a distance away from the content under discussion, while the students are making their efforts to achieve some pre-set goal (to present own problem and reasons for engaging the current course, for example) which gives Structure to their discussions (S+D-). Some time is needed for reflection here, and asynchronous modes such as email and a bulletin board are effective.
In Stage 3, the tutor engages the students with guiding comments in what Holmberg (1983) has described as a guided didactic conversation, helping the students achieve the course Structural requirements of understanding the general concepts to be learnt (S+ D+). The tutor poses questions and students defend their
formulations. This Stage 3 is characterised by hypotheses testing and logical straight- forward thinking (termed ‘vertical’ thinking in contrast to ‘lateral’ thinking) associated with problem-solving, and is collaborative. Asynchronous mode is ideal here, to allow sufficient time for cognitive connections and co-construction of new non-foundational knowledge.
In Stage 4, the final stage, the course requirements have largely been already achieved and there is no Structure left, except to disseminate the achieved mental ideas and test them out in real-life. This Stage 4 is characterised by experiential learning and is cooperative, and at minimum transactional distance (S- D+), in synchronous mode, with no imposed Structure and with educative Dialogue to assist the student to reflect on her studies.
Other models have been examined including Dewey (1933) and Brookfield (1987) by Sharma and Kawachi (2012) which support the four-stage process of the Transactional Distance Model. Of interest the Experience-Reflect-Interact-Construct model of Sharma and Mishra (2007) matches the collaborative Stages 2 and 3 of the Transactional Distance Model.
The various terms of Presence
Many terms of presence have used in the world literature of online education.
Emotional Presence has been suggested and defined by Campbell and Cleveland- Innes (2005) as “the extent to which learners and teachers transform their behaviors to accommodate the overt and covert presence of emotion”. Given that ‘overt and covert’ cover just about everything, their term of Emotional Presence as the
‘presence of emotion’ can be put to one side. Absent Presence has been suggested by Gergen (2002a; 2002b) and Rosen (2004) to describe the disconnectivity that the use of mobile telephony has brought to once-connected communities - such as in a family who used to talk together but now talk by telephone to others who are not in the physically-shared space. The term Telepresence itself and Virtual Presence are used generically to include all the various forms. Kim and Biocca (1997) and others have explored Telepresence without any finer definition of their term, and their work refers to Transactional Presence here. Absent Presence is a useful term but also generic and fairly synonymous with the term Arrival in Telepresence. Internet Presence, Online Presence, and Web Presence are also generic in meaning and are used sometimes interchangeably to indicate the user has some computer literacy and has a homepage. Learning Presence is too ambiguous since it covers Social, Cognitive and Transactional Presence, so Learner Presence is better here. Similarly the teacher is not instrumental here, since teaching can be achieved by a tutor team, expert students or online interactivities with text, so the term Teaching Presence is preferred here. The remaining six terms are suggested here to play specific roles in online education, and these are Institutional Presence, Learner Presence, Social Presence, Cognitive Presence, Transactional Presence, and Teaching Presence.
These are next positioned in the narrative learning process according to Stage (Figure 2) with particular note that the distinct change from Stage 1 to Stage 2 is the added Structure (S+), and the distinct change from the earlier stages to the later stages is the added Dialogue (D+).
Figure 2. Online presence according to stage in the learning process
Figure 2 is built around the four-stage Transactional Distance Model, and in particular focuses on the key points of adding Structure (from S- to S+) in moving from Stage 1 to Stage 2, and the added educative Dialogue characterising Stages 3 and 4 distinguishing them from the earlier Stages 1 and 2, in moving from the first two stages into the second two stages.
Institutional Presence
Institutional Presence is defined as the environment conveyed by the education provider through its homepage website, its email and printed brochures and materials and its faculty. The Institutional Presence can also be carried by its students, alumni, and by culture generally – such that leading universities are well known to most people in the world even though they have no first hand experience of being there in reality.
Learner Presence
Learner Presence is defined as the belief that the student is a real person through his or her online interactions. Learner presence is important to help other students learn, and to develop a trusting relationship with faculty and administration - for receiving personalised teaching and feedback, as well as for establishing a credible basis for examinations if any. Learner Presence is essential for obtaining good
quality learning online, but is not sufficient in itself: the other presences are also needed. Sutton (2001) and Kawachi (2003b) have discussed the effectiveness of vicarious interaction for achieving learning – where the lurking non-participating student acquires insights and ideas second-hand from the interactions among others who are participating. While vicarious interaction may be better than nothing, it remains doubtful whether good quality learning can be achieved without an active Learner Presence in the educational process.
Social Presence
Social Presence - as conveyed nowadays through social applications with diary- like entries and links to friends, parties, favourite music and so on – is not interpreted as educative. Social Presence shows the outside of the student to other students – typically entailing posting up a face photograph, and in the extreme posting up many photographs of the student partying and playing around on social networking websites, sharing intimate anecdotes and becoming friends with others.
Ten years ago, Social Presence was short personal introductions relatively formally on a course discussion thread called a ‘virtual coffee shop’. Nowadays these functional activities are in ungoverned areas off-campus. Blake (2000) has eloquently argued against the use of personal photographs and detailed self- introductions, since the lack in these has a clear advantage in online teaching since it removes the personal and subjective, and unclutters the academic objectivity and disinterestedness that should characterise the essence of higher education. Social Presence activities can introduce bias for example according to student age, or sexual orientation and gender. While demographic data of age, gender, preferred minority culture, employment choice may all be relevant for others to predict task approach and online manners, it does still remain to be found that any learning outcomes are or should be allowed to be predicated on demographic and social data.
There is no place for a personal photograph except to make non-academic friends to reduce own performative anxiety, state anxiety and trait anxiety for future learning achievement. The disadvantageous bias attaching may well outweigh this anxiety- reduced purpose of Social Presence. Social Presence has a limited role in Stage 1 as a first step before moving towards guided learning, where Stage 1 is at maximal transactional distance. Wegerif (1998) has indicated the role of this social aspect to learning online: he reports the necessity of developing a sense of community to then enable effective learning to take place. Phillips (1990) has reported that students’ use of a virtual ‘coffee-shop’ chat room served to reduce feelings of isolation through building Social Presence among the students there. Social Presence functions to build a sense of identity for the individual initially as an outsider and then as an insider member of the online community. Social Presence is only educative as a means to support the student in moving onto collaborative structured learning (from Stage 1 into Stage 2).
Cognitive Presence
Cognitive Presence was defined by Anderson (2007, slide 15) as “the extent to which the participants in any particular configuration of a community of inquiry are able to construct meaning through sustained communication”. The key wording in this definition is the important mention here of ‘sustained’. Cognitive Presence proceeds from a relatively easy initial Stage 1 into difficult collaborative Stage 2 and Stage 3, and students generally have not succeeded to navigate through these core collaborative stages - hence ‘sustained’ takes on important relevance to the current discussion.
Transactional Presence
Transactional Presence was proffered by Shin (2002) as a key characteristic in computer-mediated communications for distance learning. She described Transactional Presence in terms of ‘availability’ or the responsiveness of the other agents involved in the educative process such as the tutor and other students, and of
‘connectedness’ or the feeling that a reciprocal relationship exists between and among each student and these other agents. These terms are analogous to the absence of imposed structure (S-) and the presence of educative Dialogue (D+) in the theory of transactional distance. Shin (2002) reported that increasing Transactional Presence was key to achieving learning. In the Transactional Distance Model therefore, the desirable increase in Transactional Presence discovered and advocated by Shin can be seen as moving from Stage 2, through Stage 3 to Stage 4, in other words achieving decrease in the transactional distance. It should also be noted here that Stage 1 of the model is not covered by any consideration of Transactional Presence by Shin. This is largely due to Stage 1 not having any educative Dialogue and is representative of independent non-institutional learning. Hence Stage 1 was not discovered by Shin in her analysis of institutional programmes.
Teaching Presence
Teaching Presence is defined as the educative Dialogue between the teacher and the student(s). It is not the perceived feeling by the student that the teacher is a real person - that would be Teacher Presence - but the feeling that teaching is being done. In this terminology, Teaching Presence can only be there during Dialogue D+ which characterises Stage 3 and Stage 4 of the Transactional Distance Model. Additionally, after the course, it is desirable that the teaching continues a little. In Stage 4, the teaching involves assessing the student’s learning, giving feedback to the output and helping the experiential learning by the student. At a conference after the course has finished, or as editor of a journal publishing the student’s learning, the educative dialogue can be extended beyond Stage 4. This Teaching Presence extending beyond the course should be encouraged, as it effectively promotes social capital in academic society, and supports the student’s continuing learning and lifelong learning experience.
The aim of teaching is to develop the autonomy of the learner so that learning continues after the course without there being any teaching. Autonomy has been related to recognizing one’s interdependence on others (Boud, 1988). The student entering at
Stage 1 is initially at maximum transactional distance and is independent. After entering, the student develops Social Presence and then in Stage 2 engages learning in a group collaboratively. In Stage 3, the student learns interdependence in learning, and in Stage 4 this interdependence is demonstrated by the student articulating new knowledge and being judged by others. Interdependence is a maturity characterising an adult student, and is acquired through awareness and prior experience of the critical thinking process. Toward the end of Stage 4, the student can have acquired this sense of interdependence. So in entering a new Stage 1 iteration, the student may be interdependent (post-Stage 4) and once more newly independent (starting a fresh Stage 1). These attributes of independence and interdependence have already been found to be separate, orthogonal, and co-existing in mature students at the end their course (Chen and Willits, 1999). Therefore the Transactional Distance Model shows how the student moves from independent learning to demonstrating interdependence. If teaching has succeeded then the student should want to continue learning - to once again move into a new course of study at Stage 1 in an iterative cycle of lifelong learning. If interdependence is to flourish after the course, then someone upon whom the student can depend should be helpful (in other words there ought to be someone to be interdependent with - since any similar graduate student may be suitable, and since a graduate student should be to some extent a teacher, then the Teaching Presence coming from either the teacher or from any other co-graduate should be effective here.
This someone is not a person but a perception of someone, in other words not the Teacher Presence but the Teaching Presence. It is still not clear whether Teaching Presence must continue after the course, but it may be desirable. The UK Open University for example is now testing out the role of Teaching Presence to continue from course to course throughout the student’s lifetime.
Discussion
This discussion will focus on briefly covering the old Lipman (1988) Community of Inquiry Model, on the observation that Social Presence inhibits collaboration and progress in learning, and the popular desirabilities of Social Presence, online community, and student satisfaction.
Anderson (2001, 2002, and 2007) has suggested the combination of Social Presence, Cognitive Presence and Teaching Presence to make the educational experience in a nonlinear picture as a Venn diagram in the Community of Inquiry Model, first proposed by Lipman (1988, p. 67). In this picture, the educational experience is the area intersection of Social Presence, Cognitive Presence, and Teaching Presence. This is published in Rourke, Anderson, Garrison, and Archer, (2001), based on the unpublished manuscript of Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000), and is re-drawn here as Figure 3.
Figure 3. Lipman’s 1988 Community of Inquiry Model
It has elsewhere been pointed out that this Model does not match achieved learning. Anderson (2007) suggested that learning occurred only with the co- occurrence of all these three types of presence. Clearly from the above elaboration of the various types of presence, these three types of presence relate actually to different stages in the learning process, rather than co-occurring. A recent review of all available research on social presence and the Community of Inquiry Model by Annand (2011) found that “research results indicate that social presence does not impact [on] cognitive presence in a meaningful way” (p. 38). In particular Rourke and Kanuka (2009) found that “following a review of almost a decade of CoI research, that deep and meaningful learning did not occur as described in the framework because students are not engaged in the constituent processes proposed by the framework” (p. 40). Both Annand (2011) and Rourke and Kanuka (2009) are at Athabasca where the CoI Model has been adopted from Lipman (1988) by Anderson et al. We could presume, that if their educational experience is being correlated to actual learning, then the student must be beyond Stage 3 of the Transactional Distance Model, and somewhere in Stage 4. However it is widely reported that only relatively few students effectively navigate through Stage 3 collaborative learning. Anderson also reports such inability, with data from two graduate courses indicating only 13% of students achieving Stage-3-type collaborative educational experience. Such findings support the Transactional Distance Model of learning occurring in a narrative structure.
Concerning the observation that Social Presence inhibits collaboration, the Transactional Distance Model clearly indicates the need to change which media are employed during the learning process, for example from synchronous to asynchronous to move from Stage 1 to Stage 2. The case was made for a role of Social Presence to ease the student from the initial cooperative Stage 1 into the more complex collaborative Stage 3. Kawachi (2005) reports the difficulties in Stage 3 in detail, for various levels of students and for various group sizes. While Stage 3 did involve difficulties for some students, the largest hurdle was found in moving from asynchronous collaborative Stage 2 to asynchronous collaborative Stage 3. Students have been reported to have difficulties in Stage 3 in both paced courses by Gunawardena et al., (1997; 2001) and in unpaced courses by McKinnon (1976), Piaget (1977), and by Renner (1976a; 1976b): students in those studies reached to somewhere between the middle of Stage 2 and the middle of Stage 3. This needs discussion here. The task activities of Stage 3 require the students to raise doubts about others, to question the teacher and the text, and to search for ones own opinion even though this might be against the old established opinions of others in authority.
One reason for the students not moving into Stage 3 was that the activities of Stage 3 were inconsistent and incongruous with their own life or cultural view of the world (for example see Briguglio 2000, p. 3, for a discussion of Jones 1999 unpublished report). These questioning skills may be characteristic of a mature adult. In support to this Transactional Distance Model to master these questioning skills of Stage 3, Halpern (1984) reports that all adults should learn to question input prior to acquisition – in what he described as a ‘content’ effect. “When we reason we do not automatically accept the given premises as true. We use our knowledge about the topic (content) to judge the veracity of the premises and to supply additional information that influences which conclusion we will accept as valid” (Halpern, 1984, p. 359). Adults generally have more experience than adolescents from which to draw additional information so they can be expected to be more questioning during learning from a teacher or other resource. Younger or immature adults can be expected to not yet hold adequate foundational knowledge with which to engage the Stage 3 questioning and answering. That said, the role of Social Presence is limited, and if continuing into collaborative Stage 3 inhibits progression.
Concerning the desirabilities of Social Presence, online community, and student satisfaction, the role for socialization can be understood in terms of initial integrative motivation to become an insider. Intrinsic social motivation is the integrative motivation, while the intrinsic vocational, intrinsic academic and intrinsic personal motivations constitute the instrumental motivation. Integrative motivation has been identified through factor analysis and correlated with low quality learning. In contrast, open learning and distance education are much concerned with fostering a deep approach to studying, and to achieve this we need to stimulate the various instrumental motivations especially in adult distant students who are (unlike adolescents) less likely to hold integrative motivation. The adult student is often learning part-time, has family and other occupational commitments and is not choosing distance study for social or affiliative purposes. However, as younger and
younger students now engage distance education, studies are showing that newcomers often during their first year of a foundational course demonstrate a specific want and need for the virtual 'coffee shop' or chat-room (sometimes extrinsically to discuss their anxieties and worries with the new technology, but occasionally to share concerns and insights forming a community of learning intrinsically that relates to fulfilling the objectives of the course).
In a face-to-face environment, the social aspects totally surround the student.
However when moving to an online environment, if we persist in preserving such Social Presence then the advantages of digital learning environment - such as grappling with ideas rather than faces - can be diluted and reduce the potential for learning. This was pointed out by Carr-Chellman and Duchastel (2000) who suggested that online education was being rendered ineffective by trying to simply transfer the classroom experience to online. Social Presence does have a role in online education, but this role should be unwrapped and understood. According to the theory of constructionism (Harel and Papert, 1991), learning involves only rearranging ideas inside the mind; the physical aspects of how they got there are not important, rather that only those inside the mind can be used to construct learning.
At best, Social Presence plays a supporting comforting non-academic role in the early stages to reduce anxiety and ease the student into the academic forum of ideas.
Indeed the social aspects can be negative towards future learning (Cunningham, Corprew and Becker, 2009). Moreover in an online environment using multimedia, Herrington and Oliver (1999) have found much less lower-order discussion and less social chat were correlated with more achieved learning.
In an objective controlled study, Boling and Robinson (1999, p. 170) found that there was some considerable trade-off (an inverse correlation) between distance students' satisfaction with social aspects of the course and the actual quality of learning achieved. This would suggest that integrative intrinsic social motivation may be not the best for deep quality learning and abstract learning valued in higher education. Newcomers to distance education also demonstrate performative anxiety.
Thus there is a role for fun to initiate intrinsic social motivation especially in adult students who often do not bring this integrative motivation with them to the course, and tend to feel isolated. The only educational role for fun is to reduce performative anxiety, and this leads to the development of a community of learning. Reduced performative anxiety directly leads to (however small or gradual) achievement in learning, and this initiation of achievement motivation (despite being extrinsic) can serve as a bridge to persistence in distance education. At this stage the tutor needs to give negative comments to correct misunderstanding and prevent fossilization. This reduces and dispels (the hitherto useful but no longer necessary) integrative intrinsic social motivation – and this here is the essence of Social Presence – and thus releases the student to develop the instrumental motivations for deeper quality of learning as an independent learner or as a collaborative group learner.
There is also the issue of how to measure presence. Many researchers have simply asked students to rank Likert survey items such as ‘I feel a sense of actually
being in the same room…’ An interesting finding from Towell and Towell (1997) is that students reported that the feelings were not static throughout the course and varied depending on who they were with online. This suggests that feelings of Presence should somehow be unwrapped, as has been attempted here in the current paper. In particular Transactional Presence involving learning interactions and academic support should be distinguished from Social Presence for non-academic support. Transactional Presence notably with a tutor or peers working together collaboratively on a learning task should develop and continue through to the end of a course. Transactional Presence with a tutor should gradually decrease towards the student becoming an independent learner. This can be measured on two dimensions.
This was mentioned early in the Introduction, where it was suggested that Presence can be measured by the degree that the student is absorbed in the learning task, and not absorbed or distracted by the physical environment. These two dimensions of Arrival and of Departure respectively can be used to position the degree of Transactional Presence during the process of education or skills training.
These two dimensions were explored in the study by Kim and Biocca (1997).
Figure 4. Measuring Transactional Presence on two dimensions
In the past few years vocational skills training courses have tended to become more academic and theoretical, while at the same time academic knowledge- intensive courses have tended to become more pragmatic and related to real-life
work. Exploring the characteristics of Transactional Presence in academic versus training courses could therefore lead to better understanding of the challenges involved in these two movements that might at first glance seem to be convergence.
In Figure 4, the Transactional Presence in each can be visualised on the two dimensions of Arrival and Departure (an open learning resource has been created to help illustrate this: Kawachi, 2011).
Skills training on-the-job requires the student to gradually move towards mastery at 100% Arrival, while staying in the real-world at 0% Departure. On the other hand, education moves from 0% Arrival and 0% Departure initially through an arc to about 100% Arrival and 80% Departure: education needs the learning to be connected to what the student already knows so full 100% Departure is not wanted. The Transactional Presence in education evolves from initially needing technical skills support, to getting some study skills, watching a model, close teaching, getting feedback, close guidance, and then less guidance to reach independent learning. Further studies are needed to explore how the other forms of Presence can be measured.
Summary
In summary, virtual presence for education can be - and should be - articulated in terms of Institutional Presence, Learner Presence, Social Presence, Cognitive Presence, Transactional Presence, and Teaching Presence - and these specifically can be situated variously within the Transactional Distance Model of learning. Other terms in the literature such as Emotional Presence, Teacher Presence, Web Presence and so on are redundant. Presence is fully defined for online education as the sequential, deliberate and purposefully staged deployment of Institutional Presence, Learner Presence, Social Presence, Cognitive Presence, Transactional Presence, and Teaching Presence according to the stages of the Transactional Distance Model.
These six distinct forms of presence are associated optimally with different stages in learning of the Transactional Distance Model. When interpreted in this way, the Transactional Distance Model clarifies the role and educative function and puts limits on the educational effectiveness of each of Institutional Presence, Learner Presence, Social Presence, Cognitive Presence, Transactional Presence, and Teaching Presence, while at the same time explains why the other types of presence are spurious or unrelated to the learning process. Consequently the participants in the learning process may become better informed so as to adopt intelligently the most efficient deployment of these six types of presence to achieve learning.
The six suggested terms for presence for online education are summarised visually in Figure 2, and here summarised verbally. Institutional Presence covers over the top of the learning process including the Teaching Presence, but not totally enveloping the student who may have extrinsic activities and use non-academic support facilities including family support - so the institutional support along the top of this diagram stops short of fully covering the Learner Presence. Learner Presence
then envelops everything in the learning process. There are then two distinct forms Social Presence and Cognitive Presence becoming exercised by the student, and these two have different functions. Social Presence conveys the party face or human side of the student to others, to reduce barriers of physical isolation, to share frustrations with getting the technology to work, to reduce state anxieties and for some students to reduce trait anxieties too, to help bring about initial learning achievements, and develop integrative motivation to learn. Holding hands with group members here can ease the transition into Stage 2 collaborative learning where students must question each other and themselves, and this can be stressful. The following Stage 3 collaborative learning is more difficult in that individual ideas are suspended, subjectivity is suspended, and objective disjunctive reasoning is needed - so that Social Presence has no educative role. Any personal distractions or flash- backs to the early social chat is not academic to the task at hand and will be shunted away to social support groups off-campus. Indeed, Social Presence can lead to lower academic grades (Cunningham, Corprew and Becker, 2009): negative friends have been defined as those that distract a student away from the collaborative strategies needed for learning, and hold back a student from academic future achievements.
Cognitive Presence also begins in Stage 1 to let others know where you are coming from cognitively, your reasons for taking the course, your relevant prior knowledge that you are bringing to the learning process, knowledge you want to pool with others to build some form of shared basis, your preferred ways of learning, and this Cognitive Presence continues throughout the course as each student continues to participate in sharing and co-building knowledge. Some interactional skills are needed in the collaborative learning process as outlined in collaborative scaffolds, and Transactional Presence then becomes important from early on in Stage 2 collaborative learning. Transactional Presence skills may be synonymous with the critical thinking skills especially in Stage 3 of disjunctive reasoning and problem solving, and these skills must be demonstrated for public assessment of learning in cooperative Stage 4 where one also learns oneself through experiential learning. So Transactional Presence begins in Stage 2 and continues through Stage 3 and Stage 4 in this figure. Stage 3 and Stage 4 need guided conversation with a senior student or with a teacher - preferably with many expert teachers, and these stages are characterised by having educative Dialogue (where the earlier Stage 1 and Stage 2 did not). While the student’s Cognitive Presence and Transactional Presence for the course may be completed at the end of the course at the end of Stage 4, it may be good for bridging to a following course, life-after-the-course conferences, and to lifelong learning if some Teaching Presence were to continue beyond the end of Stage 4, especially if Learner Presence wants to continue further. So the vertical line of Teaching Presence is extended down below the end of Stage 4 in this figure.
The terms for presence that have a suggested role in education are (1) Institutional Presence, (2) Learner Presence, (3) Social Presence, (4) Cognitive Presence, (5) Transactional Presence, and (6) Teaching Presence. Brief definitions of these are given as a summary framework in Table 1 below.
Table 1. The suggested terms for Presence in online education
Presence Definition
1 INSTITUTIONAL
the overarching socio-cultural capital and academic reputation of the institution, its perceived fairness and opportunities, as well as its care and efficacy of contacts with the student
2 LEARNER
the feelings received by others that suggest the student is at some designated place at some time, conveyed through mediated communications
3 SOCIAL
a sense of camaraderie conveyed through mediated communications to others through sharing personal anecdotes, pictures, videos, audio and other media; connections
suggesting shared interests, a fashionable lifestyle and friendliness
4 COGNITIVE
the mental alertness of the student and awareness of others perceived ( usually ) by others, and carried by ideas and informed comments to the others through mediated communications
5 TRANSACTIONAL
the perceived responsiveness and availability of the student to others, and feelings of connectedness received by others conveyed through mediated communications - not of only one interaction, but of sustained intra-related interactions with others
6 TEACHING
environmental feelings received by students that some desired and effective academic guidance is available and occurring to help them learn, through mediated communications - whether by one or more humans or machines - extending beyond the expected support
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