Effects of online teaching presence on students’ cognitive conflict and engagement

ABSTRACT

Understanding the role of teaching presence in students’ learning can help improve online teaching. This study explored the effects of online teaching presence on students’ cognitive conflict and engagement by analyzing three rounds of a course taught with different levels of teaching presence. The participants were 132 students enrolled across the three rounds. Content and lag sequential analysis were used to explore the effects of teaching presence on students’ cognitive conflict and learning engagement. The results show that design and facilitation can engage students in reflection and involve them in cognitive conflicts and cognitive engagement (p < .001). Moreover, timely facilitation and direct instruction had no significant effect on students’ responses to cognitive conflict. These results illuminate the impact of teaching presence on students’ learning engagement through cognitive conflict and provide instructors with practical guidance for online teaching.

KEYWORDS:

• online learning
• teaching presence
• cognitive conflict
• learning engagement

Data availability statement

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

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 62107023).

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.

David Stein

David Stein is an associate professor in the College of Education at the Ohio State University. His research interests include the community of inquiry and teaching presence. Email: [email protected].