Module 1. e-Presence and Communications

The module “e-Presence and Communications” is very important. It deals with competencies related to online communication and interaction with others through virtual social spaces. 

More and more people are spending a greater part of their lives online for many reasons that expand beyond work and entertainment. Maintaining an active online presence, in turn, becomes increasingly important in terms of both work and personal life. Knowing how to communicate and address issues related to one’s virtual profile as well as image is among the top eSkill’s that people, especially young ones should master.

The Digital Citizenship Educational Handbook of the Council of Europe defines e-presence:

“… how you maintain your presence online and extends to your personal and interpersonal qualities that guide you in maintaining your digital reputation and digital identity. The extent and quality of your online presence can be found via a search online using your name or other personally identifiable information. Depending on the type of communications that you have engaged in, your e-presence can be negative or positive and, depending upon your social and cognitive skills for crafting your digital reputation, this can also boost or impede your e-presence.”

Likewise, communication within this context is defined as:

  “… interactions, ideas, images, videos and pieces of information that you share and exchange with others through virtual social spaces. Obviously, communications can be offline as well as online, and online communications can spill over to offline and vice versa…”.

Taken together e-presence and communication are effectively two parts that make a whole. One will affect the other and vice versa as based on the communication style you use your e-presence will be viewed in a certain light while how you aspire to be viewed will affect how you choose to communicate. This is very important as combining the two will amount to your online persona or avatar of sorts which is not always the same as your physical persona.

As such, the course will impart to participants those necessary skills to fulfil this competence.  It will teach learners how to optimize their presence while Improving overall communication skills. It will further instruct learners on how to strategically approach e-presence and communication and imbue them with a sense of net morality while ensuring they can remain safe when employing their e-personas. However, the outputs of the course do not limit themselves to the digital world alone.

These skills have also many positive spillovers into their physical world.  As such learners will be more apt to address real-life situations by being better able to respond and communicate their meaning. Furthermore, they will be able to perform related daily tasks more efficiently utilizing the best practices learned through this course and translating them into the physical world.

The range of topics covered is broad and includes such themes as:

■        What is e-presence?

■        How does it differ from physical presence?

■        How is e-presence and physical presence combined

■        Verbal Communication

■        Nonverbal communication

■        Communication in the digital era

■        How does communication affect e-presence and vice versa?

■        Best practices on optimizing e-presence and communication

■        Visual presence

Using the knowledge obtained from this course, trainees will learn How to stay safer online and maximize their e-presence results by optimizing and using communication techniques and strategies.