"A significant work of architecture is never the product of a single individual. It is always a collaboration with history and tradition, with the silent wisdom of the discipline of architecture. An architect who understands the essence of his craft accepts his role as a builder of a tradition, and he places his work in the context of this continuum with combined humility and pride." Juhani Pallasmaa. / Master of Architecture

Social presence has drawn great attention in the last three decades. A large number of studies attempted to prove that social presence exerted an effect on distance learning through including more interaction. This integrative review provided a comprehensive summary of current studies on social presence, identified problems in measuring social presence, and evaluated the effects of social presence on learning. Data were collected from 189 social presence studies in the area of distance education from 1976 to 2012. Data were analyzed qualitatively followed by a quantitative meta-analysis. This study revealed that social presence was still illusive and difficult to define. Due to its ambiguity, many doubts exist related to the measurement of social presence. The results of this study suggest future researchers should be cautious when advocating the importance of social presence in distance learning. / Ph. D.

Yes / Although there are several marketing implications that have been considered in the context of social media marketing, less attention has been paid to the influence of antecedents of consumer brand engagement (telepresence, social presence and involvement) and their consequences for non-profit organizations. Thus, the main purpose of current research is to examine the influence of telepresence, social presence and involvement on consumer brand engagement (CBE) (second-order), which in turn affects electronic word of mouth and willingness to donate. To test the proposed model, this paper used social media platforms. We employed a Facebook page that presents non-profit organizations (brands) using a sample of non-students. We found that telepresence, social presence and involvement positively impact CBE, which in turn impacts electronic word of mouth and willingness to donate. The findings of our research demonstrate how CBE is formed in this particular context and what outcomes are to be expected, with important implications for both marketing theory and practice.

Yes / This study tests the effect of personal and online characteristics on consumers' desire for revenge and their online revenge intentions. In light of the interactivity and community of social media platforms, it examines the notion that narcissism and social presence will increase consumers' desire for revenge and their online revenge intentions after a service failure. Based on a sample of 317 Jordanian consumers, the data analysis shows that the model has a very good fit and that narcissism, interactivity, and community significantly influenced consumers’ desire for revenge. Social presence was found to have a moderating influence on the relationship between the desire for revenge and online revenge intentions. Implications for marketing managers are also discussed.

Through the investigation of indirect light, reflected color, and geometric construction, and by the awareness and understanding of what allows for experiences that engage the human emotion, this thesis offers a project which has the power and presence to move the soul. / Master of Architecture

Over many decades, vigilance research has consistently found that performance on vigilance tasks decline over time (i.e., the vigilance decrement; Davies & Parasuraman, 1982), and that performing a vigilance task is both mentally demanding and stressful (Warm et al., 2008). Researchers have subsequently implemented a wide range of interventions to both understand and attempt to attenuate the vigilance decrement and its associated affective effects. Among these efforts, little attention has been devoted to understanding the effects of the social environment on vigilance. Nonetheless, a handful of studies have indeed suggested that the presence of others can affect performance, workload, and stress in vigilance. The present dissertation sought to extend these findings by examining the effect of social support on vigilance, a novel form of social presence in vigilance research, based on findings that the provision of social support may improve performance on cognitive tasks. 236 participants were randomly assigned to complete a cognitive vigilance task either alone or in one of seven social presence conditions: supportive or non-supportive observer, supportive or non-supportive co-actor, independent co-actor, evaluative observer, or merely present observer. Regarding the novel supportive and non-supportive manipulations, results indicated that receiving non-supportive statements resulted in a more conservative response bias than supportive statements, but that receiving supportive statements resulted in higher perceived effort. Additionally, receiving statements from a co-actor, regardless of the type of statement, resulted in higher median response times. In comparing the novel manipulations to existing manipulations of social presence in vigilance, participants in the non-supportive observer condition outperformed those in the independent co-actor and mere presence conditions. The results of this dissertation thus imply that verbal interactions during vigilance tasks – and the supportive or non-supportive nature of those interactions – can affect performance and workload differently than non-verbal forms of social presence.

Historically, family members are separated from patients during the course of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). More recently, the practice of allowing family members to remain during such events, known as "Family Presence" (FP) has become more commonplace. This integrated literature review examined the opinions and experiences of nurses, physicians, families, and patients involved in FP. Results suggest that FP, when properly facilitated, offers positive benefits to participating families, patients, health care personnel, and hospitals. Additionally, nurses tend to be more accepting of FP than physicians. The findings from this review provide rationale to guide the development of evidence-based guidelines related to FP. Subsequently, these guidelines will promote development of nursing interventions and institutional policies that improve outcomes for families during a particularly stressful time.

The purpose of this case study was to compare the pedagogical and affective efficiency and efficacy of creative prose fiction writing workshops taught via asynchronous computer-mediated online distance education with creative prose fiction writing workshops taught face-to-face in order to better understand their operational pedagogy and correlative affective features to determine if workshops are transferable to a computer-mediated delivery system in order to aid administrative decision-makers regarding the possible pedagogical usefulness of expanding their existing writing program to offer an optional-residency creative writing program in concert with their current high residency program. Qualitative data were collected through non-participatory virtual observation of two computer-mediated workshops and in person at a face-to-face mediated workshop. Both workshops used the traditional social constructivist workshop approach which is widely considered to be the gold standard method by the majority of creative writing programs based on its long-standing success as a pedagogical method. In addition to observing the respective workshops, one-on-one interviews were conducted with three creative writing program administrators and three creative writing instructors, one of whom was also a former program administrator. Creative writing students participating in the three observed workshops were also interviewed one-on-one. Findings revealed that from a pedagogical perspective both the computer-mediated and the face-to-face mediated workshops are pedagogically efficient and effective using a social constructivist model when workshop teachers demonstrate a strong teaching presence focused on honing novice writers’ ability and desire to write. Additionally, the researcher concluded a robust teaching presence is imperative in order to establish and maintain a strong social presence between students and between students and the instructor, as both components are critical for learner autonomy in a social constructivist teaching and learning community. However, teaching presence alone cannot guarantee a strong affective social presence as differences between students’ and/or between students’ and an instructor’s social, cultural, educational, and historical ontogenies can lead to unresolved conflicts that increase psychological distance in the teaching and learning community. Additionally, while pedagogically equivalent, computer-mediated workshops have important time management and potentially affective advantages compared to the face-to-face mediated workshop that help ensure establishment and maintenance of social presence.

Humans rely on all their senses when interacting with others in order to communicate and collaborate efficiently. In mediated interaction the communication channel is more or less constrained, and humans have to cope with the fact that they cannot get all the information that they get in face-to-face interaction. The particular concern in this thesis is how humans are affected by different multimodal interfaces when they are collaborating with another person in a shared virtual environment. One aspect considered is how different modalities affect social presence, i.e. people’s ability to perceive the other person’s intentions and emotions. Another aspect investigated is how different modalities affect people’s notion of being present in a virtual environment that feels realistic and meaningful. Finally, this thesis attempts to understand how human behavior and efficiency in task performance are affected when using different modalities for collaboration. In the experiment presented in articles A and B, a shared virtual environment that provided touch feedback was used, making it possible to feel the shape, weight and softness of objects as well as collisions between objects and forces produced by another person. The effects of touch feedback on people’s task performance, perceived social presence, perceived presence and perceived task performance were investigated in tasks where people manipulated objects together. Voice communication was possible during the collaboration. Touch feedback improved task performance significantly, making it both faster and more precise. People reported significantly higher levels of presence and perceived performance, but no difference was found in the perceived social presence between the visual only condition and the condition with touch feedback. In article C an experiment is presented, where people performed a decision making task in a collaborative virtual environment (CVE) using avatar representations. They communicated either by text-chat, a telephone connection or a video conference system when collaborating in the CVE. Both perceived social presence and perceived presence were significantly lower in the CVE text-chat condition than in the CVE telephone and CVE video conference conditions. The number of words and the tempo in the dialogue as well as the task completion time differed significantly for persons that collaborated using CVE text-chat compared to those that used a telephone or a video conference in the CVE. The tempo in the dialogue was also found to be significantly higher when people communicated using a telephone compared to a video conference system in CVEs. In a follow-up experiment people performed the same task using a website instead, with no avatar but with the same information content as before. Subjects communicated either by telephone or a video conference iv system. Results from the follow-up experiment showed that people that used a telephone completed tasks significantly faster than those that used a video conference system, and that the tempo in the dialogue was significantly higher in the web environments than in the CVEs. Handing over objects is a common event during collaboration in face-to face interaction. In the experiment presented in article D and E, the effects of providing touch feedback was investigated in a shared virtual environment in which subjects passed a series of cubic objects to each other and tapped them at target areas. Subjects could not communicate verbally during the experiment. The framework of Fitts’ law was applied and it was hypothesized that object hand off constituted a collaboratively performed Fitts’ law task, with target distance to target size ratio as a fundamental performance determinant. Results showed that task completion time indeed linearly increased with Fitts’ index of difficulty, both with and without touch feedback. The error rate was significantly lower in the condition with touch feedback than in the condition with only visual feedback. It was also found that touch feedback significantly increased people’s perceived presence, social presence and perceived performance in the virtual environment. The results presented in article A and E analyzed together, suggest that when voice communication is provided the effect of touch feedback on social presence might be overshadowed. However, when verbal communication is not possible, touch proves to be important for social presence. / QC 20100630

The purpose of this study was to explore how instructors of online courses accommodate and make provisions for culturally diverse learners in an online community of inquiry. Ten instructors from two Alberta higher education institutions participated in two phases of research. To explore this phenomenon in the CoI model, intercultural competency indicators were created to test how they could develop and expand teaching and social presence in a cross-cultural environment. In the first phase, analysis of the open-ended survey questionnaire (AMEQ) revealed that in the absence of any cross-cultural design, instructors use facilitation and open communication strategies to foster learning and prevent conflict. The second phase, informed by the first phase, involved augmenting the original 34-item CoI survey instrument. Additional roles that relate to instructor cross-cultural efficacy were incorporated into both teaching presence and social presence elements in the CoI survey instrument. The revised 37-item CoI survey instrument was then administered to the same respondents for face validity. Findings revealed that the incorporated cultural indicators correlated highly with the teaching and social indicators, indicating their usefulness to measure multicultural efficacy in the CoI model. / 2012-April