Community of inquiry presences and undergraduates' online learning outcomes: self-regulated learning as a pathway and knowledge-seeking intention as a boundary condition.

Résumé

This cross-sectional study examined how teaching presence (TP), social presence (SP), and cognitive presence (CP) were associated with undergraduates' perceived task performance (PTP) and online learning satisfaction (OLS), with self-regulated learning (SRL) as a mediator and knowledge-seeking intention (KSI) as a first-stage moderator. Survey responses from 726 students enrolled at multiple Chinese universities were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling and conditional process analysis. SRL was positively associated with both PTP and OLS. TP and CP were positively associated with SRL, whereas SP showed a significant negative partial coefficient after the three presences were modeled simultaneously. The indirect associations through SRL were positive for TP and CP but negative for SP. KSI significantly conditioned the TP- and SP-based indirect associations but not the CP-based indirect associations. The negative SP coefficient should not be interpreted as evidence that social presence is harmful; high inter-construct correlations, a marginal Fornell-Larcker violation, and elevated full-collinearity variance inflation factors indicate possible construct overlap, suppression, and common method variance. The findings therefore support a cautious interpretation of SRL as a potential pathway and KSI as a boundary condition, while highlighting the need for longitudinal, multi-source, and measurement-refined replication.