Rethinking Social Presence, Feedback, and Interaction in Digital and AI-Mediated Higher Education
This Systematic Review Team (SRT) research program examines a defining challenge of contemporary higher education: how rapidly evolving digital learning environments, from blended and online formats to emerging generative AI mediated systems, are transforming the nature of social presence, feedback, and instructional interaction in post secondary education. Although distance and blended learning have consistently demonstrated significant academic, economic, and environmental advantages, an extensive body of research led by Concordia scholars Robert Bernard and Richard Schmid, together with UQAM’s Ghayda Hassan and supported by research professionals Eugene Borokhovski and David Pickup as well as graduate student researchers, reveals a more complex and uneven reality. For a notable subset of learners, digitally mediated learning environments may also intensify experiences of social isolation, diminished well being, and disengagement, raising important questions about how connection, dialogue, and support are cultivated in technology rich educational contexts.
Building on a series of influential large scale knowledge syntheses, the research team is advancing this program through updated meta-analyses and new qualitative syntheses aimed at identifying evidence informed strategies that reduce loneliness and strengthen meaningful interaction in online learning environments. At the same time, Bernard and Schmid, in collaboration with Dr. Rana Tamim, are extending this inquiry into a rapidly emerging domain: the role of generative AI in redefining feedback processes and instructional interaction. As generative systems increasingly mediate communication between learners and instructors, fundamental questions arise about how feedback, dialogue, and instructional support are conceptualized and enacted. By systematically mapping how AI mediated feedback, dialogic exchange, and instructional scaffolding are defined and operationalized across the literature, this work seeks to bring conceptual clarity to fragmented terminology and to establish a coherent theoretical foundation grounded in the learning sciences.
Working with Catherine Fichten (Dawson College), the team has separately investigated the use of adaptive AI tools by post-secondary students with disabilities, as well as exploring how other marginalizing factors impact these decisions.
Taken together, this research program seeks not only to document change but to shape the next generation of digitally mediated learning environments. The work aims to generate prescriptive frameworks and principled design guidance that can assist institutions in creating learning ecosystems that are socially responsive, ethically grounded, and pedagogically rigorous. In doing so, the program contributes to a broader effort to ensure that technological innovation in education does not come at the expense of human connection, but instead strengthens engagement, supports well being, and enhances meaningful learning in an increasingly digital world
Researcher: Dr. Robert Bernard
