Building modern online social presence: A review of social presence theory and its instructional design implications for future trends

Nowadays, online learning has become a popular option for students because of its flexibility and more online programs are customized to students' needs. Among all the factors that affect students' online learning experience, social presence is worth much study considering the asynchronous nature of online learning and communication issues between online instructors and students. This paper reviews the origin, major definitions of social presence and research studies throughout history. Authors also document arguments of the optimal amount of social presence and provide instructional design suggestions for the development of online social presence. Further trends for social presence studies are also proposed at the end of the article.