The Creation of Social Presence in Online Learning Communities Using Asynchronous Text-based Cmc

To establish a collaborative OLC, the sense of social presence must be created. Social presence is one of the most important factors that helps people actively collaborate, thus increasing sense of belonging and social cohesion to the community. However, the creation of social presence in an OLC can be problematic due to the limitations of the communication media used. Lean media such as asynchronous text-based CMC suffer from a lack of nonverbal cues and contextual information. This situation can make learning in online settings impersonal and de-motivating. However, asynchronous textbased CMC is one of the predominant tools used by many educational institutions around the world to support online learning processes. Thus, the major question addressed by this paper is: can we create the sense of social presence in OLCs through the use of asynchronous text-based CMC?