Comparison between Interaction and Social Presence of Students Enrolled in Actual and Virtual Programs in Terms of Demographic Factors and Academic Achievement

The main purpose of all educational systems is to learn the maximum concepts of emission sources, and especially from teachers. Regarding the importance of social presence and interaction in increasing students’ learning and universities’ tendency to virtual education, the present study attempts to investigate the relationship between aforementioned variables such as social presence, interaction and students’ academic achievement. Literature review indicates that one of the big differences between online learning systems with on-campus ones are in the rate of student's social presence. The rate of social presence in virtual environments is less that face to face classes. Researchers and experts in this field are trying to decrease the gap between these two systems by increasing the interactivity level of students by using a variety of methods. The main purpose of this paper is to find differences between these two mentioned systems according to their rate of student's social presence and their interactivity. Comparing these variables according to student's demographic information and academic achievement is the other purpose of this paper. The study method is descriptive and correlational. Statistical population includes students of online courses and on-campus students at University of Isfahan in 2011-2012 academic year. Sample includes 85 online students and 150 on-campus students, who were selected randomly. For gathering data, Chih-Hsiung (2001) Social Presence Inventory and a researcher-made questionnaire were used. Data obtained from this study were analyzed by using SPSS software.Discussions of Results & The obtained results indicate that there is a significant and positive relationship between students’ interaction and their social presence in both groups. The rate of student's interaction and social presence of on-campus students is more than online course users and students in both groups prefer on-campus method rather than online one. There is only significant positive relationship between online students’ interaction with their previous academic achievement. Examination between interaction and gender show that there are differences between male and female students only with regard to educational environments. In the on-campus case, there is not a difference between girls and boys but in online environment, girls are more active than boys. Comparing students’ interactions according to academic fields indicate that there are differences between students in terms of academic disciplines: students of Executive Management and Marketing are more interactive students of Library Sciences. Overall, with regard to the results of the present study and the literature review, there are differences between students of online learning and on-campus students regarding social presence and interaction. The type and rate of the interaction is different in both groups according to demographic factors. According to results recommendations are made for policy makers and other educational planners.