Background: Online learning and teaching were globally popularized due to the impact of Covid-19. The pandemic has made both synchronous and asynchronous online learning inevitable in regions privileged with the technological affordance.
Aims: This study was designed to examine and compare the effectiveness of both learning modes through the Community of Inquiry framework.
Materials & methods: Comparative analyses on a sample of N = 170 undergraduate students who took both synchronous and asynchronous online courses in Spring 2021.
Results: The paired-sample T-tests results indicated a significant difference in social presence, cognitive presence and self-evaluated performance.
Discussion & conclusion: Teaching presence significantly influenced social presence and cognitive presence in both learning modes. However, under synchronous learning mode, social presence significantly impacted self-evaluation, grades and school identification. While social presence only influenced school identification under asynchronous learning mode. Theoretical and practical implications were also included.
Keywords: asynchronous online learning; community of Inquiry; coronavirus; online education; synchronous online learning; virtual learning.
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