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The increase in online education creates a need to explore how learning outcomes, student satisfaction, and student perceptions about online courses are affected by prior online learning experiences. This study examined the role of prior online learning experience on students’ perceived cognitive presence, social presence, teaching presence, engagement, and satisfaction. The archival data of online learners at a large midwestern university (a total n=878), including survey responses related to Community of Inquiry (CoI), engagement, and satisfaction, were utilized to conduct statistical analyses to determine whether student responses differed by the number of online courses taken previously. We found that only social presence scores (CoI sub-scale) and emotional engagement scores (engagement sub-scale) differed by the number of the online courses taken. However, the effect size was small. We concluded that student satisfaction, engagement, and perceptions of cognitive and teaching presence are not related to prior online course experiences. Implications are discussed.

This study investigated the structural relationships among online learners’ teaching, social and cognitive presence, engagement, and satisfaction. Data were collected from graduate students enrolled in an online graduate program at a large Midwestern public university through online surveys. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the data. According to the results, teaching presence, cognitive presence, emotional engagement, behavioral engagement, and cognitive engagement were significant predictors of satisfaction and these determinants explained 88% of the variance in satisfaction. The results indicate that the dominant determinant of the satisfaction was teaching presence, which had direct and indirect effects on satisfaction. Moreover, the study revealed significant predictors of emotional, behavioral, cognitive and agentic engagement. Implications are discussed in terms of theoretical insights, practices for online learning environments, and further research directions.