Social presence and virtual collaborative learning processes in higher education / Presencia social y procesos de aprendizaje colaborativo virtual en educación superior

Abstract

The concept of social presence proposed in studies on communities of inquiry has highlighted both the importance and the challenges of integrating aspects such as affective and relational expressions among team members while solving collaborative learning tasks, in order to advance in a global comprehension of learning processes. This paper presents a theoretical and methodological proposal for tackling this issue from a socio-cultural perspective by analysing the participants’ discourse in relation to expressions of self-competence (at an individual and group level) concerning the task and group cohesion (task cohesion and social cohesion). This proposal’s potential is illustrated by the empirical results of a case study that analyses social presence during a collaborative work task by university students using the Moodle learning platform.