Physically distant but digitally present: Brain-to-brain synchrony and social presence in digital collaborative learning

One of the major problems in digital learning is the lack of social presence, or the feeling that you are interacting with another real person. Social presence has been linked to better satisfaction in learning and in the learning community and to better learning outcomes. This project compares patterns of coherence in neurophysiological signals alongside educational theory to investigate these experiences of joint attention and shared intentionality during a fully digitally-mediated collaborative learning task. It also examines the impacts of individual differences in empathy and emotional states, partner familiarity, and the effects of an interactive musical game to enhance social presence.

One of the major problems in digital learning is the lack of social presence, or the feeling that you are interacting with another real person. When we work together, physiological signals such as brain activity, heart rate, and respiration tend to synchronize. This synchrony is affected by individual and group states such as familiarity, task difficulty, and emotional states. Recent research has shown that when people are more synchronized, they are more satisfied with their work, feel more connected to each other, and learn more effectively. Due to the covid-19 pandemic and distance working and learning becoming an everyday method, it is important to understand how to cultivate social presence in work and educational spaces. This project investigates the effects of several key factors shown to be important for social presence in a new collaborative learning task completed entirely online and tests a musical game as a potential intervention for enhancing social presence when learning online.