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

Online course offerings in higher education are on the rise in the US (Allen & Seaman, 2014). This study was conducted at a public regional college that offered 35% of its courses entirely online in Fall 2014 and projected offering more online courses in the future. The online faculty members primarily use the Sakai-based CMS. Yet how the online courses are taught is largely left to the individual faculty members.

Taking the community of inquiry (CoI) model (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) as a guide, this study describes how a newly hired instructor designed and delivered a Management Information Systems (MIS) course entirely online. In order to facilitate meaningful interactions between teacher and students, and students and students, four web platforms were integrated into the course: the Sakai-based CMS, the course website, Google+ community SNS, and Pearson’s MyITLab.

The MIS course is required for the undergraduate business major at the college. Sixty-two students started the course at the beginning of the semester, and fifty-seven successfully completed the course. Many students had not been familiar with Google+ and had never created a website before this class. Students’ feedback indicated that they felt using Google+ community and creating their own website clearly established their social presence – projecting oneself socially and emotionally as “real” people through the medium of communication used – in this online course. According to the CoI model, social presence is the critical component for an online course to be a success.