Sense of Presence in Digital Learning Environments: Experiences from the COVID-19 Era

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic higher education institutions relying on traditional teaching methods were forced to transfer their teaching to exclusively digital settings. This study investigates how the absence of any physical presence affects students' satisfaction in digital learning contexts. Based on the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, students' sense of presence is conceptualized in terms of learning from the content, interacting with instructor and feeling socially present as part of a particular class. The study was conducted on three cohorts of postgraduate programs that were taught exclusively digitally. Results indicate that social presence is the most important predictor of student satisfaction, followed by teaching presence which has also significant effects. Cognitive presence exhibited a weaker effect on students' satisfaction. Methodologically, the research contributes to the validation of the CoI framework and instruments at the program level. The findings demonstrate the importance of maintaining the students' social sense of belonging in the digital learning context and the instructors' responsibility to create the appropriate learning climate through their instructional methods.