Ubiquitous social presence: Context-awareness in a mobile learning environment

One of the most fundamental facets of learning is the social interaction in which learning is an outcome of individuals sharing experiences. There are three locations where learners perform learning tasks: formal locations such as classrooms or scheduled computer laboratory sessions; semi-formal locations such libraries or walk-in laboratories; and informal locations such as residences or nonacademic settings. As a learner moves across different learning contexts, a learner does not have access to the same social networks for consultation and hence receives information of variable quality depending on where they are. In this paper, we propose a learning environment that provides ubiquitous social presence awareness for the purposes of facilitating interactive consultation as a learner traverses the various learning contexts. The paper concludes that social presence through the synchronous Instant Messaging provides learners with continuous awareness of available support and encourages sharing of learning experiences.