Social Presence in a Virtual Drama Activity in Teacher Education

Abstract

This paper examines how social presence (SP) was manifested in pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) online virtual drama activity in AltspaceVR. As part of a course related to climate education, the PSTs worked in media teams (blog/vlog, TikTok, magazine) to create a strategy for promoting climate awareness. The data consist of screen recordings of the activities and PSTs’ written reflections. We analyzed the data based on affective, cohesive and interactive dimensions of SP (Garrison et al., 1999; Whiteside, 2015), and examined how the PSTs had built their characters. The video analysis revealed many instances of SP, indicated especially by cohesive and interactive responses. Overall, the VR environment was conducive to creating a shared fictional reality, but clear instructions are needed for character building.