Do levels of social competence influence the perception of social affordances among students with low levels of education? An exploratory case study of the relationship between offline and online socializing factors

In this exploratory case study we investigate the relation between off line and online factors that influence social dynamics of online, collaborative learning, that is the levels of social competence and the perception of social affordances. We argued that low educated with low social competences do not benefit from online, collaborative learning opportunities, because they would have trouble perceiving and judging social affordances like sociability and social presence. However, in our study we were not able to find a significant relation between levels of social competences and the perception of social affordances. The scores we found on the social affordances sociability and social presence were very low. It is important to further explore how at-risk students visualise their communication partner during online interaction and how this information is processed and used by them during interaction and whether expectations or preferences of low educated with regard to technology use in education influence their perception of social affordances