Exploring the role of multimedia in enhancing social presence in an asynchronous online course

The demand for online education is growing and with it there is a growing concern about the quality of online education. One of the major shortcomings of online education is the experienced social isolation. To minimize this feeling of isolation, research in the past recommends focusing on strategies that enhance social presence in an online course. However, there are many challenges to creating an online learning experience where learners experience a high degree of social presence. This is may be because the nature of the social presence construct is ambiguous and most of the research in past has measured social presence through self-report surveys. The purpose of this study was to examine the growth of social presence in a multimodal discussion forum, and understand how multimedia supports the development of social presence in an asynchronous online course. Additionally, the aim was to know the views of students and the instructor about using multimedia in an online course for various purposes. Through mixed method exploratory case study method, this study explored the role of multimedia in enhancing social presence in an online course. The study made use of three different frameworks i.e. Social constructivism, Community of Inquiry, and Social Network Analysis to understand the use of multimedia and the pattern of development of social presence. The study demonstrated various ways in which multimedia could enhance social presence in an online learning community. The findings indicated the even though some multimodal tools like VoiceThread increased the amount of interaction but it did not result in the increase of social presence. Additionally, the study revealed the inability of the social presence coding protocol developed by Rourke et al. (2001) to capture certain social presence indicators in a multimodal discussion forum. Several conjectures were developed in this study to understand the popularity of a student within a learning network.