Examining the Predictive Relationships Between Presences of a Community of Inquiry in a Desktop Virtual Reality (VR) Learning Environment

Contribution: The study examines the predictive and mediating significance of social and teaching presences on cognitive presence in a Community of Inquiry (CoI) mediated by a desktop virtual reality (VR). The findings of this study have implications for how to leverage VR learning environments to support meaningful collaborative engagement. Background: VR offers teaching and learning possibilities that can be leveraged to scale the engineering learning environment and enhance students’ learning experiences in ways that other instructional technologies used in engineering contexts cannot. However, VR must integrate and support social presence to enhance students’ learning experience. Because learning in VR is a recent phenomenon, there is need for more research on how to facilitate cognitive presence in VR environments. Research Questions: What is the predictive and mediating significance of social and teaching presence on the cognitive presence in a collaborative VR learning environment? Methodology: Participants in a CoI framework responded to a questionnaire after working collaboratively to perform land-surveying activities in a desktop VR platform. Path analysis of two models was conducted to examine the significance of teaching and social presence as predictors of cognitive presence. Findings: The results of this study revealed that both social presence and teaching presence were significant predictors of cognitive presence. The study also showed that social presence was a better predictor and mediator of cognitive presence than teaching presence. However, the teaching presence effect was sufficiently relevant to the two models examined.