This week we have spent a lot of time working with the Social Presence Model, which breaks social presence down into five subcategories. One of the driving forces behind the Social Presence Model and a strong social presence in the online community is the chance for students to interact and create a strong sense of community but also be leaders and experts in that community (Community Cohesion and Knowledge and Experience). When looking at the ISTE Standards for Educators, Standard 5 (Designer) supports that driving community force from the Social Presence Model because it asks educators to not only design a safe online environment for their students but it also pushes to make learning a student-driven thing in the online community. Social presence, especially in terms of leadership, must encompass a place for students to be the expert. If this is not achieved, students will draw away and begin to hide their real selves on the internet.
Another area of overlap between the Social Presence Model and the ISTE Standards for Educators is Standard 6 (Facilitator). ISTE states that educators need to foster a culture where students feel a sense of intrinsic motivation for their learning both individually and collaboratively. When looking at the Social Presence Model, Instructor Involvement is huge, because the more involved the instructor is in the community, the more involved the students tend to be. ISTE and the Social Presence Model place a large emphasis on educator involvement, not just as a facilitator (as ISTE calls it), but also as a contributing member of the online community.
However, ISTE and social presence do not always go hand in hand. Social presence, as we have learned, is the humanistic side of online learning. Itś a way to be real on the internet, and itś a sense of identity to both students and educators alike. When we discuss any standards in education, one of the biggest pitfalls is that oftentimes standards take away that human component, despite the desperate need for it in order to set up a successful online learning community. In ISTEś 7th Standard for Educators (Analyst), itś all about analyzing data to drive instruction (much like in a face-to-face classroom). Furthermore, if you are creating an online community with the intent to collect data, it is going to throw ḧumanization" to the wind.
For me, that looks like the use of somewhere like Google Classroom to meet. It is a great way to collect data on students and provide assessments, but as a way to create a sound social presence, it is pretty lackluster. It does not foster a sense of community the way social media or a discussion forum does, even though it is much easier to collect and analyze data on. This is a shortcoming of ISTE Standard 7 because this is often one of the standards educators focus the most on (weŕe always worried about data). Social presence and student data just do not mesh well. Social presence is all about the authentic self, and students are more than just their test scores. The Analyst ISTE Standards focus too much on analyzing data when, if we are really promoting social presence, there should also be a standard or two about analyzing students' presence in the community.
Overall, I think ISTE does a great job of creating language around their Standards for Educators that nudges a strong social presence, but in areas of data and analysis, there is a lot of room for growth (or flexibility) simply by adding in or changing the language so that it is not so ässessment" focused. Perhaps when thinking about online learning, we need to consider the ISTE Standards as one section of the road map to successful online learning while social presence is more of the legend or key that makes the road map readable.
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