The Influence of Learner Characteristics on Social Presence

Social presence is one of the more important constructs for determining the level of interaction and effectiveness of learning in an online environment. The purpose of the present study is to determine what individual learner characteristics can influence student ratings of their online social presence. The results build on previous research reported but with a larger sample size drawn from practicing teachers enrolled in online postgraduate courses. The study also affirms that the revised Computer-mediated Communication Questionnaire (Tu, 2005) is an adequately reliable measure of the construct social presence.