SOCIAL PRESENCE is an important predictor of learners' satisfaction in an online environment. A high level of social presence will create a warm, cooperative, and approachable learning environment (Aragon, 2003). It also helps to motivate and support learners and effectively engage them in the learning process. To facilitate learning in an online environment, it is important for educational practitioners to understand social presence and construct strategies to enhance it in this isolated environment.

Before we dive into the concept, imagine you have come to a new environment. You do not know anybody there and feel anxious. How will you ease your anxiety? 
You see that by socially interacting with other people, you will feel comfortable and happy in the new environment. Now imagine you are in an isolated, online environment. Will it be an enjoyable experience if you feel you cannot socially connect with others? You might want to leave it and return to your "real world." Why? Because people usually have very low social presence in an isolated environment.

We humans are social animals. We need the feeling of social presence. The amount of social presence is the degree to which an individual feels access to other people (Tu, 2001). In a real world, facial expressions, gesture, dress, physical proximity, and other non-verbal cues all contribute to an appreciable degree of social presence. However, many online environments lack these non-verbal cues.

In an online environment, social presence can be defined as the feeling of a community. We can also understand it as the awareness of existence of other people and their involvement in the communication process. (Tu, 2001)

The purpose for creating social presence in online learning environments is to make learners feel comfortable with the teacher, other learners, and the learning environment (Aragon, 2003). Lacking the feeling of connection with others, learners may lose motivation, do badly in their studies, or even drop out of the course.

To increase social presence in online environments, course designers and instructors may use strategies to increase familiarity, develop favorable social relationships, and construct collaborative and interactive learning (Aragon, 2003, Tu, 2002) .

Course designers and instructors can use following strategies to increase familiarity among learners and between learners and instructors: 

• Including learner profiles
• Integrating an introduction time at the beginning of the course
• Developing welcome messages
• Incorporating audio
• Limit class size

Instructors can help to develop favorable social relationship among learners and between learners and instructors by using following strategies. They can also encourage learners to use these strategies to establish favorable social relationships: 

• Demonstrating caring
• Using humor, emotions and paralanguage, such as :-)
• Addressing learners by name
• Striking up casual conversations

Both instructors and learners can help to construct collaborative and interactive learning by using following strategies: 

• Promptly answering e-mail
• Providing frequent feedback
• Limiting discussion group size
• Contributing to discussion boards
• Sharing information and experience

• Best Practices for Online Education
• Creating Social Presence
• Role of Social Presence

Aragon, S. R. (2003). Creating Social Presence in Online Environment. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education. No. 100 (Winter 2003), 57-68 
Tu, C.-H. (2001). How Chinese perceive social presence: An examination of interaction in online learning environment. Educational Media International, 38(1), 45-60. 
Tu, C.-H. & McIsaac, M. (2002). The Relationship of Social Presence and Interaction in Online Classes. TheAmerican Journal of Distance Education, 16 (3), 131-150. 
Ye Xu, Graduate Student ，SDSU Educational Technology
Xu, Y.(2005). Creating social presence in online environment. In B. Hoffman (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Educational Technology.