The purpose of this study was to investigate the predictive validity of teaching, cognitive and social presence from a cognitive load perspective when perceived learning satisfaction was under control. To serve this purpose, this study included hierarchical multiple regression analyses run on data collected in a fully online graduate program. The results indicated that the presences could statistically significantly predict intrinsic, extraneous, and total loads with a small effect size. Individually, cognitive presence turned out to be the best predictor of intrinsic load while teaching presence was the best predictor of extraneous and total loads. Even though social presence was not a best predictor on its own, it contributed to the presences prediction of cognitive load as a group. As a result, all these findings pointed to a small-size predictive power of the presences on cognitive load thereby providing evidence for their incremental predictive validity and the importance of perceived learning satisfaction.

Keywords

teaching presence · cognitive presence · social presence · germane load · intrinsic load · extraneous load