Examining Social Presence Influence on Students' Satisfaction with Online Learning Environments

Abstract

Online education has become an essential element of higher education and continues to grow with a potential to facilitate learning. Evidence indicates that many students become frustrated after their initial online experience and fail to pursue additional online courses. Little is known about the reasons why this phenomenon exists. The purpose of this chapter is to examine students' satisfaction with online learning environments guided by the Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) conceptual framework and to determine students' perceptions of social presence in the online environment. The selection of the student population from this program are due to the need to improve on the U-rate. The U-rate is the unsatisfactory rate of a course due to few factors. Such factors are low Course Level Assessment (CLA), course difficulty, content presented in the course is not clear, or students struggling with course outcomes.