Browsing by Subject "Social presence"
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Item Discussion forum versus learning blogs: a comparison of student understanding, student interaction, and social presence(Texas Tech University, 2008-12) Hall, Kimberly D.; Maushak, Nancy; Crooks, Steven M.; Jones, Stephanie J.Undeniably, online learning is growing. The information age with its technological developments has strongly affected higher education. Although a review of the literature revealed multiple studies concerning interaction in online courses and discussion forums, emerging technologies such as blogs have come on the scene in the past several years. There was a need to explore how this newer communication option-use in education can affect student performance. The purpose of this study was to compare two types of online communication tools, learning blogs and discussion forums, and two types of question prompts, higher-level and lower-level thinking, in terms of student understanding of course material, quality of student interaction, and social presence in a graduate-level online education course at a mid-sized Texas university. The results of the examination of student blog and discussion forum grades showed that students had significantly higher grades on their blog postings than their discussion forum postings. Students also had higher grades when they responded to higher-level questions than lower-level questions. However, there was no significant difference found between student interaction levels for blogs or discussion forums, nor were there significant differences in student interaction levels for higher-level questions than for lower-level questions. The results of the social presence survey revealed that there was a significantly LOWER social presence score for blog use than for discussion forum use. It was anticipated that social presence scores would be higher for blog use, but results showed that the opposite occurred.Item Effects of Podcast Tours on Tourists' Experiences in a National Park(2011-02-22) Kang, Myung HwaThis dissertation examines the effect of podcast tours on park visitor experiences. Podcast tours have emerged as a new medium in facilitating the interaction between tourists and destinations. Providing visitors with enhanced experiences through the use of interpretive technologies is especially important for national parks dealing with enhancing visitors' experiences which may influence visitors' perception of environmental stewardship and, in turn, positively affect preserving environmental resources. Furthermore, there has been a noticeable increase in consumer demand for podcast tours. Based on theoretical accounts that human voices convey rich social information, this dissertation proposes that podcast tours enhance perceived social presence and mindfulness which leads to enhanced tourist experiences (learning, enjoyment, and escape) and environmental stewardship (attitudinal and behavioral stewardship). A field experiment was conducted at Padre Island National Seashore using MP3 players containing podcast tours. The podcasts were manipulated using four experimental conditions: 2 information source compositions (single narrator voice vs. multiple narrator voices) x 2 narrating styles (formal style vs. conversational style). The questionnaire administered to subjects after they took the podcast tour included measures of social presence, mindfulness, tourist experience (learning, enjoyment, and escape), and stewardship (attitudinal and behavioral stewardship). The pre-questionnaire included question items regarding the nature of the visit, visitor characteristics, technology usage behavior, audio tour evaluation and socio-demographics. Responses from 221 visitors were analyzed using structural equation modeling with LISREL 8.7. The results provide evidence that multiple voices, and to some extent also narration style, positively increase social presence but neither experimental condition had any influence on mindfulness. The increased feeling of social presence influences park visitors' enjoyment and escape experiences but not learning. Mindfulness was found to affect visitors' learning, enjoyment, and escape experience. The results further show that enhanced experiences positively influence attitudinal stewardship which in turn leads to behavioral stewardship toward national parks. The results of this dissertation generally support the theoretical model suggesting that even if communicated through audio-only media, the human voice creates and sustains a positive social context for meaningful interaction which influences tourist experiences and stewardship. Mindfulness was also found to be an important construct impacting the quality of visitor experiences but could not be explained by the specific podcast tour designs tested. From a practical perspective, the findings provide important insights regarding the usefulness of podcast tours as interpretative media, and also suggest that specific designs are more capable of fostering feelings of social presence.Item Social forces and hedonic adaptation(2013-05) Chugani, Sunaina Kumar; Irwin, Julie R.Consumers acquire products to enhance their lives, but the happiness from these acquisitions generally decreases with the passage of time. This process of hedonic adaptation plays an integral role in post-acquisition consumer satisfaction, product disposal and replacement behavior, and the "hedonic treadmill" that partially drives the relationship between consumption and happiness. Humans are social animals, however, and we know little about the relationship between the social environment and hedonic adaptation. My dissertation addresses this gap by exploring the moderating role of social presence (Essay 1) and self-concepts (Essay 2) on hedonic adaptation to products. Essay 1 explores how social presence affects hedonic adaptation to products. Research on general happiness has shown that significantly positive life events tend to maintain their positivity for longer periods of time when they involve active social interactions. I examine a more common situation in the domain of product consumption, i.e., the presence of others during consumption, and test whether hedonic adaptation to products is moderated by public contexts. By tracking happiness with products over time, I show that a "social audience" (i.e., the presence of others and the perception that those others notice the consumer) moderates hedonic adaptation through a consumer's inference of the social audience perspective. Inferring that the social audience is admiring one's product slows down adaptation, and inferring that the social audience is negatively viewing one's product accelerates adaptation. Essay 2 explores the role the identity-relevance of a product plays in hedonic adaptation. Extant research illustrates that consumers avoid consuming identity-inconsistent products in order to avoid dissonance arising from product choices conflicting with important self-concepts. I show that dissonance can also arise from consuming identity-consistent products because of the force of hedonic adaptation. I provide evidence that consumers feel uncomfortable experiencing declining happiness with identity-consistent products and thus resist hedonic adaptation to such products in order to resolve the dissonance.Item Social presence, interaction, and participation in asynchronous creative writing workshops(2011-12) Williams, James Patrick; Bias, Randolph G.; Dillon, Andrew; Doty, Philip; Rice-Lively, Mary Lynn; Keating, ElizabethTrends in user-generated content on the Web are shifting the role of online course materials, student work, and communications channels in instructional settings. Evidence of users’ interaction with content has been brought into the foreground through interface elements which reflect and encourage interaction, including comments, ratings, tags, “likes”, view statistics, and others. This research considers such features "interaction traces" and explores their use and interpretation by student learners. This research investigates the use and perception of these features by students within a particular type of asynchronous learning environment, the creative writing workshop. Within the two courses studied, a poetry course and a fiction course, two forms of interaction traces were presented: peer criticism posted as comments on creative work and visible view counts for all comments posted in the course. Informed by the Community of Inquiry framework and using a case study methodology, this dissertation investigates whether interaction traces affect perceptions of social presence among students and how students respond to this evidence of the interaction and critique. Data were collected from course discussion transcripts, course management system usage statistics, and participant responses to six surveys. Discussion thread transcripts were subjected to content analysis for indicators of social presence. Additionally, the researcher performed individual interviews with the instructor and a subset of students. Analysis of participants' social presence, interaction with others, and participation in the class revealed evidence that peer criticism was mediated by social presence, that students engaged in a variety of individual relationships based on perceptions developed through interaction traces, and that participant reading and writing activities affected how they perceived the course and their peers. Social presence in comments served not only to humanize participants and to resolve conflict but led to confusion and frustration in some cases. The instructor's high level of social presence in the courses influenced participants and provided a model for some participants' approaches to coursework. Based on the themes which emerged from the case reports, this dissertation suggests some implications for online course planning and course management system design with regard to interaction traces.