Effects of teaching presence on learning engagement in online courses

Abstract

Teaching presence has the potential to influence learning engagement. But the specific role of teaching presence in learning engagement is yet to be explored. Hence, I surveyed 1,328 college students in China through an online questionnaire. The structural equation modeling analysis result indicates that the five dimensions of teaching presence (i.e., design and organization, discourse facilitation, direct instruction, assessment, and technological support) accounted for 45.3% of behavioral engagement, 34.3% of cognitive engagement, and 40.9% of emotional engagement. Specifically, assessment and technological support demonstrated a significantly positive correlation with behavioral engagement, while direct instruction demonstrated a significantly negative correlation with it. Design and organization, assessment, and technological support demonstrated significantly positive correlations with cognitive engagement. Direct instruction and technological support had significant positive correlations with emotional engagement. The results indicate that different dimensions of teaching presence have different effects on students’ learning engagement.

Keywords:

• teaching presence
• learning engagement
• online courses
• mixed method

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest is declared by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 62107023), the Humanities and Social Sciences Program of the Ministry of Education (No. 21YJC880076), the Philosophy and Social Science Research project of Jiangsu Higher Education (No. 2021SJA0247), and Natural Science Research Project of Jiangsu Higher Education Institution (No. 21KJB120012).

Notes on contributors

Yang Wang

Yang Wang is an assistant professor at the School of Educational Science at Nanjing Normal University and a visiting scholar at the Ohio State University. Her research interests include instructor’s teaching presence and learning analytics.