Designing Social Presence in an Online MIS Course: Constructing Collaborative Knowledge with Google+ Community

Abstract

This study was conducted at a public regional undergraduate college that offered 35% of its courses entirely online in Fall 2014 and projected offering more online courses in the future. The author explored, based on the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 1999), how best a Management Information Systems (MIS) course could be designed and delivered entirely online. The CoI model stipulates that social presence – participants’ ability to project themselves socially and emotionally as “real” people through the medium of communication used – is a critical component for an online course to be a success, along with cognitive and teaching presences. In order to facilitate meaningful multi-media interactions among participants, multiple web platforms including Google+ community were integrated into the course. Many students had not been familiar with Google+, nor had they created a website, before this class. Students’ feedback indicated their perception that using Google+ community and creating their own websites created a positive synergic effect and clearly established their social presence in the online course.