The Key to Engaging Learners in 2018 is Social Presence

When I was a child cutting edge technology meant cable television, remote controls, word processors and Nintendo. Back then watching TV was a passive experience. So much so that everyone was accustomed to having to get up from the couch to turn the channel. So, when there were commercials we usually watched them even though we finally had a remote.

That was the 1980’s and 1990’s. Not surprisingly, school was a similarly passive experience. A student could go years without ever raising his or her hand to contribute to a discussion or ask a question. The way school was supposed to work was that teachers spoke, and students listened. For the most part, schooling was like a single lane, one-way street. It was passive, and low stress.

A series of innovations that happened outside of education have shifted the landscape of communication in schools. First, the internet in the late ‘90’s paved a new multi-lane roadway, but it took a while for schools to see that their own communication traffic patterns had to change.

In 2007 when the iPhone was launched there finally was a tool that would make two-way traffic in schooling a necessity. It was only a matter of time before schools would have to transform in order to accommodate the tremendous influx in traffic.

By traffic, I’m referring to communication. This includes communication between teachers and students, students-to-students, students-to-parents, parents-to-teachers, teachers-to-parents, administration-to-… You get my point.

Today, we are at a point where this traffic is tremendous. Everyone has a voice. Technology has given us this great opportunity. It’s been transformative in this way, but it requires that we choose our preferred medium for sharing that voice. Successfully employing one’s voice requires time, patience, and the training to successfully do so, and it should not be assumed that learners automatically understand how best to use their voice.

Perhaps the most important responsibility of schools today is to show students how to use them? To introduce students to all of the different mediums available, and then allow students to experiment with them.

Here’s the BIG problem

Even ten years after the first smartphone appeared in a school there are still a high number of schools and educators that just don’t see that learning can no longer be a passive experience. No one is to blame for this, it takes time to understand how technologies reshape the world. For instance, it took years before people realized that they didn’t have to sit through every commercial even though they had a remote control, but once this was realized there was no turning back.

You see, the days of passive education were about teacher presence. Back then, terms like classroom management and learning strategies mattered. They mattered because your audience was on a couch watching TV commercials at home. Anything you taught had a chance of being learned. The audience was passive.

Today, that is not the case. The audience is not passive. It yearns for engagement. It wants to take the nearest device and swipe right, left, or up when an instructor goes to ‘commercial break’. This is why the idea of managing students is outdated. The devices that we possess have become our remote controls for life, and we are no longer idle passengers. We are all drivers of our own vehicles.

And you know what? Whether you think so or not, that’s a good thing. Learners today actually want to be engaged and empowered. They don’t want their time wasted. They’ve realized that their time is their greatest asset and having it wasted should be a crime.

Truth be told, school sucked for most of us when it was passive. You know what else? School sucks even more today when teachers try to use classroom management techniques from 1995 to create a “low distraction” learning environment.

So, if teaching presence is no longer effective, then what are schools supposed to do to accommodate traffic on these new learning highways?

Schools need to start understanding the key role that social presence plays in the digital world. We need to stop being nostalgic about the old one-way, single lane routes that were established in the past. Those routes don’t exist anymore because they’ve been widened and paved over.

At its core social presence is the sense of being with another. The original definition of social presence as applied in education is that it involves the degree of presence between two communicators using a communication medium. Embedded in this two-way relationship is the degree to which each person is perceived as a ‘real’ person.

The most important aspect of establishing social presence in today’s learning environments is that “a student’s sense of being in and belonging in a course and the ability to interact with other students and an instructor” is dependent on the perceived level of social presence (Picciano). For students to be engaged they must feel that they are valued and that the other participants are ‘real’. They have to be engaged.

Focusing on social presence achieves three things:

• Student satisfaction
• A community of learners
• Persistence in learning

How do we support social presence in Digital Age schooling?

There are a few tools and strategies that support active learning, and establish presence. It’s important to note that active learning involves layering of communication. This requires the use of multiple mediums. Probably the most relevant approach is the use of digital storytelling. When using digital storytelling the communicator should focus on being sociable, warm and personal. Emphasis on these qualities leads to higher levels of social presence.

One of the best tools for delivering digital stories is through video. Why? Because the affect of the communication leads to cohesive, interactive responses from the learners. The key is that the videos need to be rooted in the learners’ context. This is what makes them personal. The second key is that their must be interactive elements in the video to enable two-way communication. In short, the learner needs to be able to respond to the content. An example would be a discussion forum.

In order for instructors to take advantage of videos and digital storytelling they have to be making their own content. You can’t just download someone else’s videos and expect to establish the level of presence necessary to engage learners. At times the instructor will have to personalize and engage in the creative process as well.

If you want to learn how to establish social presence, then you need to research real-world examples

One place you can go to find great examples of social presence is on YouTube. Find the creators who are getting high levels of engagement, and study what they are doing. I’m not talking about watching school content, I’m saying watch the creators who the students are actually spending their own time watching. This is where student attention is outside of schools. Look at the comment sections, even though this is a painful activity it is important because you will get a better understanding of how to affect learners with your own digital stories.

My theory has always been that instructors have to be attempting to create content that learners will want to watch and engage in on their own time. This is no easy task, but the tools are finally at our disposal to do so. Remember, the remote is in your hand, put it to good use.

I hope that you will share your stories and comments below! Always remember, learning belongs to all of us. If you enjoyed the content, then consider sharing it with your networks! As always, thank you for your time & attention.

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#socialmedia #education #storytelling #attention #socialpresence