In educational technology and blended learning areas, teaching presence within the Community of Inquiry framework remains very important for building effective learning environments. Even though existing research shows teaching presence plays a key role in shaping social and cognitive aspects, the specific ways these elements connect have yet to be fully mapped out. To fill this gap, this study looks closely at how different parts of teaching presence-like helping dialogue happen, giving direct teaching, and creating lesson plans-affect social and cognitive presence, while also checking how social presence acts as a middleman. Using strong analysis tools like SPSS 26.0 and SmartPLS 4.0 for path modeling methods, the findings show that: 1) Facilitating dialogue not only directly helps cognitive presence but also helps more by making social presence stronger; 2) Direct teaching has a clear positive effect on cognitive presence but doesn’t work through social presence; 3) Teaching design only influences cognitive presence by going through social presence first. This research gives the first real-world proof of how teaching presence specifically works on social and cognitive elements, offering useful ideas for blended teaching approaches. The results help us understand the Community of Inquiry framework better and point to new directions for future studies on teaching methods. By addressing an important research gap and applying strong statistical tools, this study provides practical advice for improving blended learning, contributing to both theory and practice in education.
Cite this paper
Jin, F. (2025). Social Presence as a Mediator of Cognitive Presence in Blended Learning: Roles of Dialogue Facilitation, Direct Instruction, and Teaching Design. Open Access Library Journal, 12, e3361. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/oalib.1113361.
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