Cultivating supportive online learning environments is an art that begins with nurturing connectedness and community through social presence. As learning management systems continue to become more intuitive, faculty may seek to achieve a more individualized approach by considering authoring tools that respond to individual student needs and preferences in regard to course presentation, navigation, and content. Reflection and prior experience relate to the knowledge and experience element of the Social Presence Model. Reflection lends itself as a powerful formative assessment tool, encouraging learners to actively reflect on course readings and assignments in relation to their prior experiences, interests, and career plans. Recognizing students need for early and continuous feedback on their academic performance contributes to social presence and can positively affect student performance and retention. It affects social presence because feedback serves as a primary and important communication channel between instructors and students.

This chapter addresses the unique position of those already well versed in technology during the COVID-19 lockdown and how their expertise became imperative to the success of more novice educators. Through the lens of disruptive innovation, this chapter details the how the pandemic advanced one innovative partnership of experts from a virtual school, the Regional Education Lab, and a university. It addresses how they collaborated to help educators understand the importance of social presence for students during a pandemic and how to better support their students in this difficult time. Ultimately, this chapter underscores that the disruption story does not come from educators implementing new technologies, but rather from seizing the opportunity to partner and learn solutions together that push innovation forward.

This descriptive study offers lessons learned from students’ experiences with a gamified, social media-like instructional approach in eighteen courses from spring 2021 through spring 2022. Researchers at a mid-sized university in the southeastern United States leveraged Christensen’s (2011) disruptive innovation theory as a guiding framework to explore student satisfaction with this instructional method. This first phase of the study measures learner satisfaction with this approach using the Ritzhaupt (2019) Electronic Learning Satisfaction Survey (eLSS). Preliminary results suggest that learners (n=145) rated their experience with this disruptive technology above average on all Likert scale questions on the eLSS. Identified best practices for instructional design using similar approaches include repeating the game rules, reframing the purpose beyond the game, helping students appreciate their community, guiding students to lead their own posts and gain reactions, and thwarting those trying to game the system. Initial findings across multiple courses suggest that instructors can leverage the gameful experience and social media-like engagement to foster critical connections and increase course satisfaction.

Through 15 years of research on social presence examining the level of connectedness among students and instructors, the authors uncovered a recurring theme: the need for districts to provide better support professional development (PD) in K-12 settings. In this chapter, they address some of the challenges in implementing PD, describe and explain the social presence model (SPM), provide evidence from multiple case studies, and summarize the key findings. The research uncovered that while online and blended teachers often recognized the need for continued support and its role in helping them be more effective educators, they often moved forward without adequate PD. Because the passion and perseverance of these teachers predict long-term success for students, districts need to have a plan in place to help them get the PD needed to maximize their experience and impact student learning most effectively. In closing, the authors offer micro-communities as one robust, socially present, easy-to-implement, and budget-conscious solution that at least partially addresses this growing concern.

To offer order during a rapidly growing pandemic, in mid-March 2020, various academic leaders at a midsized, private institution communicated directives to the university community Faculty largely adapted quickly to the inundation of email and confusion by finding their students, learning technologies on-the-fly, and triaging their curricular plans By fall, the plan changed again, this time requiring HyBrid and HyFlex with limited face-to-face delivery while simultaneously live streaming to the rest of the class over Zoom Teaching at an epicenter of the crisis where the university resides, faculty's emotions were high in a time mental health suffered tremendously This journal of events was written by an interdisciplinary team of faculty

This study examined the student experience (n=507) during emergency remote learning at a medium-sized private southeastern university during the COVID-19 pandemic, leveraging the Social Presence Model (SPM) as a guiding framework. Tensions were high at this critical time as students were stressed with financial burdens, supply shortages, overlapping work and educational schedules, and shared technological resources and physical spaces. Therefore, this study helps educators better understand students’ emotional needs and experiences during the March 2020 lockdown transition to remote learning. Specifically, examining the student experience in a time of crisis offers critical lessons about the importance of connectedness, online readiness, cultivating relationships, adaptability during transitions, and class interaction. The data revealed the depth of anxiety felt by students and suggests the need for increased empathy, communication, interaction, and flexibility from their instructor and course community to proceed with academic coursework, particularly for first-year college students. The findings elevate the importance of social presence as a literacy for learning in any modality, underscore the need to support the mental health of our students, and stress the urgency for online and remote learning readiness for current and future public emergencies.

Through 15 years of research on social presence examining the level of connectedness among students and instructors, the authors uncovered a recurring theme: the need for districts to provide better support professional development (PD) in K-12 settings. In this chapter, they address some of the challenges in implementing PD, describe and explain the social presence model (SPM), provide evidence from multiple case studies, and summarize the key findings. The research uncovered that while online and blended teachers often recognized the need for continued support and its role in helping them be more effective educators, they often moved forward without adequate PD. Because the passion and perseverance of these teachers predict long-term success for students, districts need to have a plan in place to help them get the PD needed to maximize their experience and impact student learning most effectively. In closing, the authors offer micro-communities as one robust, socially present, easy-to-implement, and budget-conscious solution that at least partially addresses this growing concern.

Facilitated by Rick Ferdig of Kent State University and editor of JTATE, this Symposia brings together the work of the K-12 Online Learning SIG and the Distance Learning SIG communities and focuses on presentations from scholars in the field whose work has implications for both higher education and K-12 online learning. This Symposia will have nine panelists who will each present their work and then talk specifically about how their work can inform both K-12 and HE. Included in the list of Higher Education-focused panelists are Trisha Litz of Regis University, Maggie Niess of Oregon State University, Antoinette Davis of Eastern Kentucky University, and David Marcovitz of Loyola University Maryland. Included in the list of K-12-focused panelists are Leanna Archambault of Arizona State University, Kerry Rice of Boise State University, Michael Barbour of Touro University, Amy Garrett Dikkers of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and Aimee Whiteside of the University of Tampa.

This article examined a blended learning initiative in a large suburban high school in the Midwestern region of the United States. It employed a single-case exploratory design approach to learn about the experience of administrators, teachers, students, and parents. Using Zimmerman’s Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) Theory as a guiding framework, this study explored surveys, face-to-face observation data, interview transcriptions, and focus group transcriptions to learn about different stakeholders’ experiences and their observations about student readiness for blended learning. As a result, the data suggested three major themes, namely how blended learning initiatives can promote autonomy and self-regulation, encourage inquiry and build relationships, and ultimately help students feel ready for college.

This chapter condenses a decade of our case study research on social presence, or the level of connectedness among students and instructors, within online and blended learning environments. It addresses the power of emotion for learning with technology, defines the concept of social presence, outlines and explains the Social Presence Model (SPM), offers evidence from students and instructors in four case studies in both K-12 and Higher Education, and summarizes the key findings of over a decade of research. These research projects demonstrate the SPM's significance for teachers as they reflect on and adjust their instructional practices to create connections with and among their students. Our findings suggest an opening for the exploration of the impact of emotion for the learning experiences of middle and high school students taking online or blended courses. Through our research, we also discovered the importance of a dedicated cadre of leaders who individualize student learning in blended programs to help their students to transition into higher education through the use of emotion and innovative instructional strategies. Moreover, emotional support is invaluable to all learning with technology, but particularly in blended and online learning programs. Finally, our key finding is that social presence embodies an essential literacy for cultivating emotions and relationships that enhance the overall learning experience.

Purpose - This chapter presents data from research studies specifically aimed at gathering the perspectives of K-12 students who are taking online courses for credit recovery, their virtual school teachers, and face-to-face school support professionals.Approach - This research employed ethnographic techniques to explore the benefits and challenges of online learning as a strategy for credit recovery.Findings - Our research explores several key findings. The data suggest that the benefits and challenges of online learning for students are one in the same. With proper orientation, individualized support, and purposeful structuring of online programs, online and blended learning as a potential solution for credit recovery students, potentially decreasing the number of future high school dropouts.Implications - This chapter suggests a need to look more carefully at orientation, support, and structuring procedures for online credit recovery.Value - This chapter is very valuable as a tool for thinking about credit recovery online. It also provides valuable insight into credit recovery from the perspectives of students who are doing the online courses.