Analysis of the structural relationship between presences and organizational support and satisfaction in a cyber university in Korea

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in studying presence as a key variable to explain the learning process of cyber university students in order to improve the quality and the outcome of their learning experience. Moreover, successful learning experience depends not only on a learner's internal factors such as presence but also on the learner's external learning environment where organizational support plays a critical role. Therefore, this study aims to provide the base data to recommend instructional design methods and management strategies for effective cyber learning by analyzing the structural relationship between three presences (i.e., cognitive, teaching, and social presence) and organizational support as well as satisfaction. During the first semester of 2009, 788 students at a W cyber university completed a series of surveys about their learning experience in teaching, cognitive, and social presences, organizational support, and satisfaction. The results indicated that teaching presence, cognitive presence, and organizational support exerted a meaningful effect on satisfaction whereas social presence did not. © 2011 IADIS.