Investigation of academics and students views on social presence inonline learning environments

Aim: The general purpose of this study is to reveal the opinions and experien-ces of academicians and students within the scope of the research on online social here, to understand whether the concept of social hereness is taken into account during the design and implementation of online courses, and to determine what measures should be taken for the more qualified implementation of the distance education system. In addition, the quality of the distance and online education system is also questioned. In line with these aims, the main purpose of this research is to reveal what kind of course design should be created in order to create social cohesion while designing the courses to be carried out by the distance education method of the lecturers in universities wit-hin the Turkish Higher Education system. Method: This research is a qualitative study and is designed as a case study. The case study design has allowed for a comprehensive study of the concept of social hereness, which cannot be fully captured by quantitative measures. The study was car-ried out in the spring semester of the 2022-2023 academic year, and the study group consists of 11 faculty members actively working at Eskişehir Osmangazi University Faculty of Education and 101 students studying at the same faculty. The data of the study were collected through a semi-structured interview form and analyzed by content analysis and code, categories and themes were created. Findings: According to the findings of the research, most of the instructors sta-ted that they tried to create social presence by using various methods and techniques in online courses.However, they emphasized that they had difficulties in structuring their courses in order to create social existence due to the technical and systemic problems experienced in the courses, the crowded class sizes, the lack of motivation of the stu-dents and the lack of sufficient knowledge and equipment of the instructors regarding the design of courses. Considering the findings obtained from the students, they emp-hasized that the instructors agreed that fun and interactive lessons that would keep the students active in the lesson, interact with each other, and motivate them more against online courses rather than uniform lectures. Conclusion and Suggestions: In line with the findings obtained from the rese-arch, it is seen that the instructors who will teach remotely and online are trying to ful-fill many concepts in creating social mobility while structuring their courses. However, in order for the lessons to become more interactive, students and instructors should keep their voices and videos open during the lesson, the responsibilities and behaviors expected from the students should be stated in clear and clear statements in writing at the beginning of the semester, communicative problems between the instructors and students should be eliminated and the instructors should be more accessible, the ho-mework or studies given to the student should be more collaborative. It has been conc-luded that there should be studies so that students can feel comfortable as if they are in a face-to-face classroom environment and this will increase students' interest and mo-tivation in online courses. In other studies to be carried out in line with this research, a more comprehensive study can be carried out by using quantitative data. Keywords: higher education, online learning, distance learning, community of ınquıry model, social presence