Improving Social presence through providing contents with personalized flickers based on learner´s knowledge

Social presence is one of the most important factors that influence on learning process in e-learning environments. Many studies to perceive higher degree of social presence in learner and find the factors affecting social presence in e-learning environments have been done. In this study a new method based on existential psychology and knowledge extracted from learner to enhance social presence is presented. In the proposed method, elements that have been inspired from existential psychology are embedded in educational materials. Participants in the case study were 98 M.S. students. They were divided into two groups. The first group received educational materials unchanged. The latter used the improved educational resources. An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare two methods that are used to deliver education materials. The proposed method significantly improved perceiving higher degree of social presence in the students and impact on increasing learners´ motivations to pursue educational activities in the e-learning environment.