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Distance learning has proliferated significantly in the last 20 years. This chapter considers some of the issues and implications when teaching and learning moves from an in-person to a distance mode. It begins with a brief history of distance learning, considering both the technologies used and the dominant pedagogical approaches employed. This is followed by a survey of the impact of Michael Moore's theory of transactional distance, which considered the consequences of separating the learner from peers and instructor. Contemporary work on Moore's contribution includes transaction and participation, activity theory, and transactional presence. A second major aspect of distance learning has been the attempt to introduce social presence into learning environments. The history of social presence is explored, as are its levels and consequences for the learner. Contemporary aspects of social presence reviewed include communities of inquiry. While Web 2.0 has spectacularly resulted in connectivity, it remains unclear as to whether this automatically resulted in more strongly connected learners. Connectivist approaches are considered and distinctions made between technological connectivity and pedagogical engagement. It is argued that the full and exciting potential of Web 2.0 in distance learning requires a commitment to the distanced learner, balancing learner autonomy and teacher presence, promoting meaningful social engagement, and meeting the specific needs of the distance learner.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic on university students during the Movement Control Order (MCO) and Recovery Movement Control Order (RMCO). MCO was introduced in March 2020, and the learning process switched from face-to-face to online learning in schools and universities. Subsequently, with the reduced number of daily cases and active cases of COVID-19, the Malaysian Government implemented RMCO from 10th June to 31st December 2020, which had more relaxation of restrictions. This study particularly focuses on students studying in higher education institutions by analysing the impacts of the community of inquiry on students learning performance. The construct of the community of inquiry includes social presence, cognitive presence and teaching presence.

This paper provides quantitative analysis, independent sample t-tests and multiple linear regression on the students’ learning performance using the framework of community of inquiry. This paper presents the analysis of the online learning preference of 282 university students during MCO and 456 students during RMCO.

The results showed that there is a significant difference in students learning process during MCO and RMCO. The findings also indicated that the social presence is the most important factor in affecting learning performance during the MCO period and it changed to teaching presence during RMCO. Students lost motivation and could not perform well using online learning methods during the MCO period but the situation improved during RMCO.

This research helps to identify the impact of the pandemic on higher education and provides insights into reshaping the future of higher education system.

Students are isolated from their peers in the learning process and struggle to adapt to the new normal in online learning. The teaching faculties are picking up new skills to deliver online courses and manage the risk as best as they can. This study presented the impact of the pandemic on students learning performance and explored the space for universities as business organizations to provide better infrastructures and platforms for online learning while battling with cash flow and debt level during this challenging time.

Students need peer support and guidance from the faculty team in their learning journey. The study provides a better understanding of how we shall promote a better higher education environment, either blended or online learning.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to examine the impact of the community of inquiry on students learning performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Students suffered during the MCO period and the learning experience got better when they were able to adapt to the changes. The higher education system needs a reform and the agency theory in corporate governance plays an important role in the transformation.

The perception of an inferior learning experience is the main challenge for online learning, which leads to higher dropout rates in online courses. The purpose of this paper focuses on investigating how the multi-dimensional construct of social presence would affect the behavior of online learners.

A conceptual model that describes online learner behaviors is proposed by including the four social presence variables, learning satisfaction and continuance intention, which is examined via the data collected by a survey of 237 online learners from a typical online learning platform in China. The relationships between variables were tested via structural equation modeling.

The results revealed that the intimate and immersive social factors have positive impacts on learning satisfaction, which in turn results in continuous intention in online learning. Thus, online learning platform providers should seriously consider building an intimate and immersive online environment for learners. Furthermore, this research provides a more comprehensive understanding of online learning from a social presence perspective for researchers and practitioners.

The study contributes to a better understanding of the social presence which is conceptualized as a four-dimensional construct, and shows how social factors influence learning satisfaction and continuous intention, providing a deeper understanding of the core relationship between social aspects and learning performance in online learning.

Recent research on immersive experiences in online environments for higher education has attributed a fundamental role to two distinct yet connected psychological phenomena: the feelings of being virtually present in the education environment, often simply called presence, and peak episodes of flow. The authors conceptually delimitate these two psychological facets of e-learners’ experiences and examine their interplay. The authors show how flow episodes are elicited by students’ sense of control over the online education environment, their attention being focussed on the learning tasks, and their feelings of being physically placed in the online education setting. Also, the interactivity created by the online education environment evokes an e-learner’s imagery, which in turn triggers presence feelings and episodes of flow. The authors further show that, although presence and flow are triggered by some common antecedents, they differ in the object of the individual’s immersion, and that presence feelings facilitate flow. Moreover, the authors provide practical recommendations for higher education institutions, policy makers and the academic and information and communication technology community involved in e-learning, to make sure e-learner experiences reach their fullest potential.

As online learning has become more prevalent, how learners interact with each other in those learning environments has become more salient. To develop effective levels of interaction, students must feel comfortable to express their ideas and views. For this reason, this paper aims to look at how individual students’ levels of social presence affect germane cognitive load. Germane cognitive load is the amount that students are able to construct schema and can be seen as analogous to learning.

This study looks at the results of survey data (n = 433) that investigate the relationship between social presence and germane cognitive load. The students were surveyed from the Open Cyber University of Korea in the fall semester of 2018.

The present study found a statistically significant positive relationship between social presence and germane cognitive load. The study found a Spearman’s correlation coefficient of 0.595. Furthermore, the sample was divided into a high, medium and low grouping of social presence. Among these groupings, the high level social presence had the highest level of germane cognitive load, and the low level social presence had the lowest level of germane cognitive load.

This result shows the importance and value of developing levels of social presence in online environments. Some research has shown relationships between student interaction and learning, but the present study looks directly at social presence and germane cognitive load. From this research, the authors can see the value of encouraging higher levels of social interaction in online learning environments.

This study aims to examine how lecturers at a South African university navigated teaching and learning in the current educational landscape obscured by the global pandemic. The authors examine how lecturers employed a community of inquiry (CoI) in their online classrooms within the context of emergency remote teaching (ERT). The study further aims to ascertain students’ feedback concerning current ERT practices at the university toward cultivating a CoI. Doing this would offer more appropriate interventions and support for lecturers and students from, within and for an African context. If not, instructors might risk reproducing and perpetuating the same outdated pedagogies before the pandemic.

A mixed-method research design informed by a pragmatist paradigm was used. Primary data were collected from 40 lecturers at the university through online questionnaires of which 10 lecturers responded to e-mail interviews. The original CoI survey was distributed among 150 students in the Faculty of Education at the university.

The findings revealed that, despite the rushed and trial nature of the use of ERT, there were instances of a CoI among students. The findings further revealed that the majority of the lecturers were not adequately prepared for ERT as a result of limited experience with asynchronous and synchronous online teaching. There was evidence of an absence of a strong active teaching presence that was found to have negatively influenced the development of social and cognitive presences during ERT.

Only a single faculty at one university was selected in this single case.

The results of the study have significant implications for faculties and academic staff who are currently teaching online in response to the teaching challenges paused by the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings will assist lecturers in developing appropriate pedagogical intervention strategies to enhance strong and active teaching and social presences necessary for cultivating the cognitive presences among students during ERT.

This is one of the first empirical studies to explore the influence of ERT on the cognitive, social and teaching presences at a university in an African context. The findings and conclusion of the study are novel as they relate to the development of appropriate pedagogical practices and intervention strategies suitable for ERT in response to the current education crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors influencing English as foreign language (EFL) learners’ satisfaction using learning management systems (LMS) in blended learning.

This study conducted a survey method among 164 intermediate EFL learners of Safir Language Academy in Iran. Survey data were analyzed using the partial least squares (PLS) method, while Smart PLS was used to test the hypotheses and to validate the proposed model.

The results indicated that teaching presence, cognitive presence, information quality and system quality affect satisfaction of blended learning. However, there is not a significant relationship between social presence and learners’ satisfaction in blended learning using LMS.

This study proposes a comprehensive model which has been developed using the indicators of community of inquiry model, system quality and information quality to contribute to our understanding of key factors impacting EFL learners’ satisfaction.

The outcome will help academic institutions to provide effective English-medium instruction for the enhancement of EFL learners’ satisfaction and a basis for factors influencing EFL learners’ satisfaction in blended learning.

The purpose of this study is to concurrently test the effect of cognitive absorption and perceived social presence on technology acceptance model core variables, e-satisfaction and e-retention among undergraduate students of Northern Malaysian public universities.

To empirically test the model, the authors developed quantitative research by collecting data from 730 undergraduate students of public universities in the Northern states of Malaysia. Partial least squares–structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

The results of the study reveal that cognitive absorption has a direct significant and positive effect on perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of e-learning platforms and an indirect effect on e-satisfaction and e-retention. Equally, perceived social presence has a direct positive and significant effect on perceived ease of use and an indirect effect on e-satisfaction and e-retention, while e-satisfaction positively and significantly influences electronic retention. However, perceived social presence has an insignificant effect on perceived usefulness.

The findings of this study provide insights to practitioners, academia and university management, policymakers, designers and marketers on how to use the selected variables to improve the e-learning systems generally, and LearningZone Moodle in particular.

Several studies have been conducted in the domain of electronic learning; none of them, however, concurrently linked cognitive absorption and perceived social presence with technology acceptance model core factors to predict e-satisfaction and e-retention using LearningZone Moodle. This study helps the research community to fill this gap as the literature lacks a concerted discussion concerning these variables to significantly predict e-satisfaction and e-retention in an online learning context.

The purpose of this paper is to report on an investigation of university students' participation and learning presence in a blogging activity, designed to support collaborative learning. There are three main reasons justifying the current research: to better understand the structure and the dynamics of students' blogging subgroups; to reveal students' patterns of engagement and their roles within the blogging community; and to evaluate the applicability of social network analysis (SNA) in studying students' performance and learning presence in educational blogs.

The design of students' blogging activities was rooted on the ideas of authentic learning and followed a project‐based learning philosophy. Data analysis used methods of SNA to reveal collaborative aspects of students' engagement, the different roles undertaken by the students and the structure of the community within group blogs.

SNA shed light into the different patterns of students' participation and the dynamics of students' learning presence within the community of group blogs. Research findings, both quantitative and qualitative, indicated that the majority of the students in the sample were generally active and exhibited learning presence actions within their group blog. Differences between students in the various groups were also recorded.

The study reported here is limited by the specific sample and the context of implementation. Future research will be directed towards applying the Community of Inquiry schema, in a way complimentary to SNA, to further analyse students' learning and cognitive presence in the community of the whole blogging project.

The originality of the paper concerns both the educational design of the blog‐based project activities and the use of SNA to reveal the different patterns of students' participation in educational blogging activities. Results could be of value for both educators and researchers in the field.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on the students studying in higher education institutions pre and during Movement Control Order (MCO). MCO was introduced in March 2020, and the learning process must switch from face-to-face to online learning in schools and universities. This study particularly focuses on university students by analyzing the students' motivation, the community of inquiry and learning performance. In total, three factors are examined in the construct of the community of inquiry, namely social presence, cognitive presence and teaching presence.

This paper provides quantitative analysis and paired sample t-tests on the students' learning motivation, the community of inquiry and learning performance. This paper presents the analysis of the online learning preference of 282 university students and examines whether there is significant difference in preference before and during MCO.

The findings indicated that the students lost motivation and learning performance using online learning methods during the MCO period. There is a lack of infrastructure to support the learning and social support from the lecturers and peers.

This research helps to explore improvements that are needed to manage such a pandemic to support teaching staff and students.

The COVID-19 is a pandemic that has affected the learning process of the students, and it should not be neglected even when it is over. Policymakers shall consider providing more training and better infrastructures to cater to smooth Internet connection and platform for online learning. Students are not able to focus on learning using online learning methods and, they lack motivation during the pandemic. The teaching faculty also need to be well-trained in delivering online courses and to be more tech-savvy.

With the detailed analysis of the students' learning motivation, the community of inquiry and learning performance, it helps to promote a better education environment.

This is the first study to examine the learning motivation and performance model as well as the community of inquiry during the pandemic. It is evident that university students initially have a high level of motivation and community of inquiry before the pandemic but yield a significant drop during the MCO. The paper presented how COVID-19 seriously impacted on the learning experience.