Students’ Perceptions Of Teacher’s Social Presence In An Efl Online Course Interaction

Abstract

One of the elements in measuring the success of online learning is social presence, which involves interaction from both parties, namely the teacher and the learner. Although research on this topic is quite commonly examined in countries using English as the first language, this research is still less applied in EFL countries. In addition, research on social presence in EFL countries is mostly related to the learners themselves. Therefore, this research intends to find out students' perceptions of the teacher's social presence in online classes. The research was conducted at a private university in Yogyakarta, involving 81 people as the participants in this study. This study conducted a survey by adapting a questionnaire from Gunawardena (1995), which consisted of 17 rating items with a scale of 1 −indicates a positive perception− to 5 −indicates a negative perception−. The study explained the highest and lowest perceptions based on the overall results and the results of each class, and the results pointed out that the students perceived the teacher as warm as the highest and personal as the lowest. Therefore, most students noticed that they were positively conscious of their teacher’s social presence.