Text Messaging to Improve Social Presence in Online Learning

By J.Barry DuVall, Matthew R. Powell, Elizabeth Hodge, and Maureen Ellis

This article is about creating social presence in an online community through another medium, text messaging. The authors ran a pilot study on the use of text messaging as a means of improving social presence in distance education courses at East Carolina University (ECU) (Duvall, Powell, Hodge, and Ellis, 2007). The authors discussed the importance of social presence and the impact it has on participants who are in online learning communities, much the same as discussed by Palloff and Pratt. I agree with DuVall et al. (2007) when they mentioned, “the key to success in online learning involves using strategies that facilitate communication and enhance social presence among online learners, not just applying the newest technologies.” Palloff and Pratt mentioned the same idea in their book when they gave the example of how a university bought expensive software for their online classes but it sat there unused for a year because no one knew how to use it or took the time to use it. Palloff and Pratt argue that the “key to the learning process are the interactions among students themselves, the interactions between faculty and students, and the collaboration in learning that results from these interactions” (Palloff and Pratt, 2007, p. 4). DuVall et al. (2007) agree with the same ideas of Palloff and Pratt and they go on to experiment with text messaging to see if this will help increase social presence in online communities.

To make sure participants were not feeling isolated in the courses, DuVall et al. (2007) came up with a list of four criteria they felt were important for the instructor to send out via text. They mainly focused on course updates, grade information, deadline information, and weekly "hot" topics to respond to so students were not bombarded with information. They had participants fill out a survey after the pilot program ended and many students found the text messaging to be “cutting edge, different, great ways to communicate, and others found it not necessary” (DuVall et al. 2007). Some students found text messaging to be more useful than others, but overall they concluded text messaging was useful and provided a sense of immediacy which helped foster a stronger sense of social presence since one no longer needed to be by a computer to check in with your instructor and fellow classmates.