THE EFFECT OF COMMUNICATION STYLES TO SOCIAL PRESENCE IN DISTANCE LEARNING

Abstract

In this research, it is aimed to reveal the relationship between the communication forms of distance education students and their perception of social environment. The study’s research group consists of 166 distance learning students, studying at Trakya University, in the 2016-2017 academic year. The research data was collected using the Social Presence Scale and the Communication Style Scale. After were checked assumptions of normality data from the scales, Parametric tests had been used. According to the research findings, participant's point average on the social presence scale is high. Variables of gender, age, and working status have no significant impact on Social Presence. When looking from the perspective of gender variables, significant differences were found in favor of men in the form of argumentative communicators, and significant differences were found in favor of women in the form of nonverbal communicators. Age and working status have no significant impact on communication styles. when is examined the relationship between communicators styles and social presences, it might be said that all the factors except for argumentative factor, have a meaningful relationship on social presence. According to the results of regression analysis, people who are “friendly”, “having impact” and “relevant communicator” form have a high perception of social presence however people with “argumentative” form of communicator have a low perception of social presence.

Keywords

• social presence
• communicator forms
• higher education
• distance education
• planning of distance education.