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The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic brought about rapid changes in higher education (HE) pedagogies, with universities adding online options to their core face to face offering. The use of technology to facilitate learning has been a mainstay in traditional distance education settings. The paper aims to understand student and teacher experience of synchronous online learning in HE to develop practice and assist those newly coming to online teaching.

The authors conducted a ‘rapid review’ of articles related to this topic over the last 21 years. Thematic analysis of the 61 studies identified for inclusion were; Use of technology, planned pedagogy, comparison of synchronous and asynchronous learning, relationships online, teacher and student attitudes, COVID-19 reflections.

This study’s findings show many studies examined the transition from classroom to online learning, rather than the experience of being online. Building a community of learning, with interaction between all parties, was central to success in the development of an approach to online synchronous teaching.

Few of the early papers included here expressly explored student and teacher experiences of synchronous learning. Instead, they broadly discussed blended learning, or compared functionality and effectiveness of online teaching, with traditional in person or offline/asynchronous alternatives. An additional drawback was that educators were frequently involved in studies which investigated the experiences of their own students.

This study is one of the few to focus on the experience of staff and students in the online synchronous environment. The results show there is scope to achieve improvement in online learning, through research focussed on how students, lecturers and institutional administrators adapt to the new normal.

This paper aimed to determine the self- and co-regulation influences on the community of inquiry (CoI) for collaborative online learning.

A quantitative survey was used on a sample of (N = 626) enrolled postgraduate students in a South African Open Distance and e-Learning (ODeL) university. The measuring instruments were the CoI and the shared metacognitive surveys. Correlation and multiple regression analyses were used to determine the association and influence of self- and co-regulation on the CoI.

The results indicated that self- and co-regulation related to the CoI (teaching, cognitive and social) presences. In addition, the results revealed that self- and co-regulation influence the CoI presences. Self-regulation had the highest influence on teaching and cognitive presence, while co-regulation influenced social presence.

The study’s convenience sampling method from a single university limited the applicability of the findings to other online learning environments.

Higher educational teachers who encourage student self- and co-regulation may enhance their online teaching, cognitive and social presence when studying online. The research’s findings may be valuable to teachers to enable them to provide a more collaborative and interactive online learning environment and promote productive online communities.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge about the relationship between teaching, social and cognitive presence and self- and co-regulation within the CoI framework. Furthermore, there has also been limited research focussing on the dynamics of shared metacognition within the CoI framework in an ODeL context.

The Covid-19 pandemic forced educational institution to rapidly switch to online delivery. Even if the pandemic seems to be over, online learning will continue to constitute at least a part of the course’s delivery in the future. With that in mind, this study aims to explore the factors that influence teaching presence online and how these perceptions will guide teachers to adopt practices that will impact their presence accordingly. Given the changes implemented due to the pandemic, this study is essential to identify the significance of teaching and social presence in online classes.

Semi-structured interviews were used to find answers to the posed research questions. Exploring the perceptions and experiences of four university teachers, this study, informed by the community of inquiry (CoI) model, investigated the impact of teaching and social presence on the online learning experience in higher education.

The findings indicate that teachers acknowledged the importance of these two elements in teaching online. Moreover, the study investigates how teachers could establish teaching and social presence to enhance the online learning experience.

The study explores teachers’ views on the importance of presence, their practices to achieve in an online learning environment and addresses a gap in the literature on “teaching presence from the educator’s perspective, [since] most studies exploring the student’s perspective” (Gurley, 2018, p. 200).

Social presence (SP), which refers to individuals’ perception of others being engaged as “real people” in the same situation, is a crucial component in technology-rich learning environments (TREs). This study aims to identify major learning design, antecedents and outcomes of SP within TREs, and identify common findings from the past two decades.

Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses review principles and a qualitative analysis of selected articles, a final review of 72 studies that met inclusion criteria was obtained. Key information, including education level, discipline, sample size, study type and measurements, was extracted and studies were further analyzed and synthesized based on design features and learning modes.

The study identifies five crucial factors for instructional design to foster SP in TREs: technology affordances, multimedia features, social factors, instructional principles, learner characteristics and learning management systems. The authors compare two learning modes across three dimensions and identify popular technologies used in studies related to SP over the past two decades. Practical recommendations are provided for educators and educational technology developers to enhance SP within technology-rich learning environments.

This research contributes to the discourse on online learning and computer-supported communication, particularly in the post-COVID-19 era. By examining factors influencing SP and providing implications for instruction and educational technology development, this study offers evidence-based support to educators for engaging learners and fostering authentic learning experiences through adaptive selection of educational technologies.

The purpose of this study was to obtain valuable insights into students’ engagement and experiences within the virtual learning environment, especially in the context of crises. Among the innumerable challenges people throughout the world faced during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, those of students in institutions of higher education needing to engage in online academic studies are of special interest. Using an online survey, this study could predict students’ online engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic through three theoretical frameworks: the students’ academic motivation to study, the Big Five personality traits, and loneliness, and with a new tool measuring the participation in the Zoom platform.

To examine the psychological and technological factors predicting the students’ engagement, this study surveyed 547 students from different academic institutions of higher learning.

Findings show that the less lonely the students felt, the less neurotic they were, and the higher they scored in levels of extroversion, agreeableness, consciousnesses and openness to experience, the greater their engagement in their academic studies. In addition, students who were older, more educated, with higher intrinsic motivation and lower lack of motivation were more engaged in their online academic studies. Finally, participating in classes through the Zoom platform and experiencing it positively was a significant predictor of higher academic engagement.

Recognizing these factors can enable educators, institutions of higher learning, counselling services and students to obtain tools for higher engagement in online learning.

This study aims to explore first-year engineering students’ perceptions of the engineering librarian as an instructor in multimodal environments related to Information Literacy (IL) topics, teaching strategy, content evaluation, organising, planning and support.

A quantitative approach was used through a survey instrument based on an online questionnaire. Questions were adopted and modified from a lecturer evaluation survey. A simple random sampling technique was used to collect data from first-year cohorts of engineering students in 2020 and 2022.

Respondents perception of the engineering librarian as an instructor in multimodal learning environment was good. Findings revealed students’ learning experiences were aligned with IL instruction even though the environment changed from blended to online. However, an emerging theme that continuously appeared was a lack of access to technology.

These findings may help in developing and strengthening the teaching identity of academic librarians as instructors in multimodal learning environments.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is novel in that it evaluates the teaching abilities of an academic librarian in multimodal environments through the lens of students.

This paper aims first to describe the most prevalent teachers’ and students’ behaviors in synchronous online classes in emergency remote teaching; second, to discern behavior profiles and third, to investigate what features explain the observed behaviors.

An adapted COPUS observation protocol was employed to observe 292 online classes from 146 higher education teachers.

The most prevalent behaviors were: Presenting for teachers and Receiving for students, followed by Teachers Guiding and Students Talking to Class. Furthermore, cluster analysis showed two groups: Traditional and Interactive. The variables that better explained belonging to the Interactive lecture group were disciplinary area – social sciences and humanities –and teaching in technical institutions.

In a context where higher education institutions intend to project the lessons learned into post-pandemic learning experiences, this study provides observational evidence to realize the full potential expected from online and blended teaching and learning.

Despite the prevalence of synchronous online lectures during COVID-19, there is a paucity of observational studies on the actual behaviors that occurred in this context. Most research has been based on surveys and interviews. This study addresses this gap.

The current study investigates the factors influencing graduates’ perceived employability by utilizing the stimulus-organism-response theory, in the post pandemic era.

A quantitative approach was employed to examine the hypotheses of the research framework through partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) on the SmartPLS software.

The result indicates that course structure has a positive effect on students’ grit and community of inquiry (CoI). Also, students’ grit and CoI have a positive relationship with students’ performance, while students’ performance has a positive relationship with perceived employability. Moreover, students’ grit, CoI and students’ performance sequentially mediated course structure and perceived employability, whereas readiness and self-directed learning strengthen the relationship between students’ performance and perceived employability.

The findings will benefit university management, government and potential employers on how confident the student is in the chances of a future career after graduating from a higher institution.

This study aims to explain the factors associated with receiving a specific brand of COVID-19 vaccine within the framework of the theory of reasoned action (TRA). This study extends the TRA with the country-of-origin image (COI), brand image and electronic word of mouth variables.

This study is based on a cross-sectional survey conducted among 460 people who received the Sinofarm vaccine. Participants were selected using an online convenience sampling method. The structural equation modeling technique tests the proposed hypotheses.

The results showed that the essential factor associated with the intent to get the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine is the attitude toward the Signopharm vaccine. Also, word of mouth, subjective norms and brand image are the most critical factors that play a role in forming a favorable attitude toward the Sinopharm vaccine. Finally, the country-of-origin image does not affect attitudes toward the Sinopharm vaccine.

The area of vaccine marketing has been given limited attention in academic literature. This study addresses this area with little research and is greatly attractive to many brands targeting the consumer market. The study results can form a foundation for creating the branding strategy for this product category and assessing its demand in various markets.

Using an ecological model of child participation and drawing on newsletter data from schools across the United States of America (USA), this chapter statistically explores five state factors linked with school protests against gun violence: (1) children’s neighbourhood opportunity; (2) race/ethnicity; (3) voter preference for either a Republican or a Democratic president; (4) child participation policies; and (5) gun laws/violence/ownership. The chapter explores factors linked to both student participation in protests and student nonparticipation in protests that take place at their schools. Three factors were found to be associated with participation and nonparticipation: children’s neighbourhood opportunity, voters’ preference, and participation policies. Findings suggest that Democratic-voting states, mediated by education opportunity, predict the frequency of student protests against gun violence. In Republican-voting states, where education opportunity does not mediate the frequency of school protests, students still organised and participated in protests but to a lesser extent. In addition, states with high overall children’s neighbourhood opportunity and voting student education board members are highly likely to have non-protesting students in schools with protests. The chapter presents five conclusions from these results for the positive and negative exercise of child participation rights and considers what further multilevel explorations can be done to further test the framework employed for this analysis.