Learning Management Systems (LMSs) are modeled after classrooms. While they are fully capable of supporting some learning activities (e.g., information and document sharing, asynchronous and synchronous discussion, and online tests and quizzes), they are incapable of supporting others. For instance, LMSs currently cannot support the just-in-time, and sometimes playful, interactions that happen before and after class, during a break, and so forth. Out-of-the-classroom interactions like these have potential instructional value (Kuh, 1995) and can help strengthen interpersonal relationships between and among faculty and students. In the following chapter, we briefly highlight some instructional uses of Twitter—a Web 2.0, microblogging tool. Social Presence and Online Learning Social presence is a concept well established in the online education. It refers to the “ability of participants in a Community of Inquiry to project their personal characteristics into the community, thereby presenting themselves to other participants as ‘real people’” (Garrison et al., 2000, pp. 89). Short, Williams, and Christie (1976), originally developed it to explain the effect telecommunications media can have on communication, social presence was used to describe the degree of salience (i.e., quality or state of “being there”) between two communicators using a communication medium. It took on new importance with the rise of computer-mediated communication (CMC) and later online learning (Lowenthal, in press, 2009). Social presence is now a central concept in online learning; researchers have shown—to varying degrees—a relationship between social presence and student satisfaction (Gunawardena, 1995; Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997; Richardson & Swan, 2003), social presence and the development of a community of learners (Rourke, Anderson, Garrison, & Archer, 2001; Rovai, 2002), and social presence and perceived learning (Richardson & Swan, 2003). Faculty have tried different ways to establish and maintain social presence within an LMS (e.g., incorporating audio and video, posting instructions, and providing frequent feedback; see Aragon, 2003 or Lowenthal and Parscal, 2008, for more strategies) as well as different ways to do it using tools outside of an LMS (e.g., DuVall, Powell, Hodge, & Ellis, 2007) investigated using text messaging to improve social presence).
also can visit :http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/CUOnline/FacultyResources/additionalResources/Handbook/Documents/C
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