Introduction

The theory of social presence dates back to the work of J. Short, E. Williams, and B. Christie in the 1970s. Short, Williams, and Christie were interested in how media influences how people communicate. Identity is a fluid construct, one that is negotiated both with the interaction partners and within the context in which it is being performed. Establishing one's social presence and identity in online learning environments can be difficult due to limited communication channels and transactional distance. Text-based communication is used heavily in many online learning settings leaving learners to establish both social presence and identity in the absence of substantial visual and aural cues. Online learners have varying degrees of social presence, based largely on how much they contribute to class; whether they are socially anonymous depends not on their volume of contributions but rather the degree to which they share identity cues within their course communications.