Investigating Social Presence in Audio and Text Online Interaction for Language Learning
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Ligao Wu
Ligao Wu is an associate professor at the Institute of Online Education, Beijing Foreign Studies University. His research efforts focus on computer-assisted language learning.
Abstract
This study aimed at comparing the level of social presence generated in a voice-based chat room and a text-based forum when learners tried to build personal relationships and form an online community for learning on an online language course in China. A mixed-method approach was taken for the study, drawing on data from questionnaires to find out about student perception of social presence, and postings of text messages and audio messages in the communication of the student learning process to search for students’ projected social presence in terms of affective, interactive and cohesive features. Interviews were also conducted to supplement additional information with the hope of forming a complete picture of social presence in the reality of an online learning environment. The text-based forum and the voice-based chat room were found to have a different impact on student social presence. In terms of student perception, most of them were more likely to get to know peers in the text-based forum and thus developed a sense of community in their learning process of the online course. Yet they believed that the voice-based chat room had the advantage of helping them with course learning. In the actual interaction, the voice-based chat room was more interactive although the text-based forum was more affective and cohesive. But in terms of the affective category, the problem with the existing framework in literature was that there were no prosodic features included. Therefore, in future more research is needed to probe for the relationship between prosodic sound features and social presence, and the present theoretic framework must be extended. In interviews, students explained that in the voice-based chat room prosodic features led to higher peer awareness, which further reinforced this need.
About the author
Ligao Wu is an associate professor at the Institute of Online Education, Beijing Foreign Studies University. His research efforts focus on computer-assisted language learning.
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© 2020 FLTRP, Walter de Gruyter, Cultural and Education Section British Embassy
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Reaching for the Gold Standard: Metaphors and Good University Teachers
- Researching Classroom-Based Assessment for Formative Purposes
- Using Social Media to Promote Intercultural Communication Between Chinese and American University Students
- Investigating Social Presence in Audio and Text Online Interaction for Language Learning
- A Study of Localization of Task-Based Language Teaching in China
- A Study of Three Variants of Gerund Construction from the Contrastive Perspective of Social and Natural Academic Abstracts on Construction Grammar Theory
- Why Is nice and Adj So Much More Frequent than Adj and nice?—From the Perspective of Humans’ Social and Limited-Processing-Capacity Attributes
- Abstracts
- Chinese Abstracts
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Reaching for the Gold Standard: Metaphors and Good University Teachers
- Researching Classroom-Based Assessment for Formative Purposes
- Using Social Media to Promote Intercultural Communication Between Chinese and American University Students
- Investigating Social Presence in Audio and Text Online Interaction for Language Learning
- A Study of Localization of Task-Based Language Teaching in China
- A Study of Three Variants of Gerund Construction from the Contrastive Perspective of Social and Natural Academic Abstracts on Construction Grammar Theory
- Why Is nice and Adj So Much More Frequent than Adj and nice?—From the Perspective of Humans’ Social and Limited-Processing-Capacity Attributes
- Abstracts
- Chinese Abstracts
