Predictive effects of undergraduate students’ perceptions of social, cognitive, and teaching presence on affective learning outcomes according to disciplines

The Community of Inquiry framework has been used in numerous studies, yet these studies rarely examine disciplinary differences as a potential factor in student outcomes. To address the research gap, this study examined the differences in students' perceived social, cognitive, and teaching presence and their predictive effects on students' affective learning outcomes (perceived learning outcomes and satisfaction) according to their academic disciplines. The survey data were collected from 25 undergraduate online courses at two universities. The participants (n = 418) were recruited from four disciplinary areas: soft-pure (n = 142), soft-applied (n = 63), hard-pure (n = 78), and hard-applied (n = 135). MANOVA and stepwise multiple regression analyses were conducted. The results indicated that there is no significant difference in the levels of students' perceived social, cognitive, and teaching presences, yet it is important to note the trend for all disciplines which was teaching presence was perceived as the highest presence, followed by cognitive and social presence. In addition, differences were found in the predictive effects of each presence on students’ perceived learning outcomes and satisfaction according to their disciplines.