Page 82 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

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social presence and the mobile workforce
Charlotte (Lani) Gunawardena wanted to know what causes people
to be perceived as “real” in an online learning relationship. Gunawar-
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dena, born in the tropical island of Sri Lanka, and an award-winning
faculty member at the University of New Mexico, is an acknowledged
distance education expert around the world. The problem, she knew,
was that people learning at a distance can feel isolated. The solution,
building relationships between students and teachers, improves both
communications and learning.
Improved “social presence,” or that degree of being perceived as
a real person, has been found to improve trust, conflict resolution,

interpersonal relationships, and perceived learning—all key issues
for the mobile workforce—in online classes. Learners view teachers
with high social presence as more effective and positive than those
who can’t manage it. Further, this holds true in cultures as diverse as
Morocco, Sri Lanka, and China. Simple strategies, such as coaching
and encouraging online participation, asking for self-introductions,
and encouraging private messages between students, increases social
presence.
Lani told us that understanding the cultural context is very im-
portant because some strategies that would be effective in one cul-
tural setting would be counterproductive in another. “One technique
for building social presence is to share photographs and let people see