An Instrumental Case Study of the Online Learning Experience of Macau University Students During Covid-19: What Kind of Online Presence Matters?

Students’ Perception of Online Learning in Covid-19

Since the outbreak of Covid-19, studies on students’ perception of emergency online teaching and their adaptation to blended learning when the virus turned into a “new normal” accumulated. Across the globe, many studies reported students’ positive experience of studying online, for example, Almahasees et al. (2021) in Jordan, Van Wig et al. (2022) in the US, Poláková and Klímová (2021) in Slovakia, and the aforementioned Macau based studies (e.g., Gong et al., 2021; Guan et al., 2023; Hsiang et al., 2022). Meanwhile, there is a large amount of research revealed that students’ online learning experiences were unsatisfactory due to the following reasons: students’ loyalty to offline education (Blizak et al., 2020), inadequate digital access, unsuitable home learning environment, and shortage of necessary computer skills (Cranfield et al., 2021), students’ anxiety in the pandemic (Howcroft & Mercer, 2022), fatigue and demotivation after constant virtual learning (Zizka & Probst, 2023), the inability to obtain timely feedback and to achieve in online learning (Conrad et al., 2022; Warfvinge et al., 2022), the shortage of socialization in online learning (Siah et al., 2022), not being self-regulated learners (Yeung & Yau, 2022).

Reflecting on the successful and unsuccessful cases of online learning, Zizka and Probst (2023) concluded that students’ online experience quality is determined by multiple relationships, that is, learner-to-resource, learner-to-contents, learner-to-learner, learner-to-faculty, and learner-to-technology. From Zizka and Probst’s (2023) perspective, the relationships seemed to sit at the core of the quality of the online learning experience; no wonder the relation-based online community of practice (CoP) was regarded as an effective online teaching method (Hou, 2015). Hou (2015) also pointed out that online CoP’s affordance lies in its realization of the presence of teachers and peers. Therefore, keeping presence plays an essential role in students’ online learning experience.

Presence in Online Learning

Although creating a sense of presence for students learning in an online setting seems a vital consideration for educators and software developers (Hajibayova, 2017; Kehrwald, 2008; Law et al., 2019; Lowenthal & Dunlap, 2020; Parrish et al., 2021; Wang et al., 2021), the need to create a feeling of presence represents a unique challenge. Coonfield and Rose (2012, p. 192) observe that presence, as a once unproblematic field of experience, only became debatable and problematic when communication technologies emerged as an alternative mode of instruction. Furthermore, when the pandemic accelerated the virtualisation of traditional classrooms, it blurred the boundaries between students’ classrooms and their home environments, as did the temporary closure of university campuses, rendering the development of presence in the online classroom a concern.

Many previous studies of presence in online learning have used Garrison and colleagues’ Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework (e.g., Garrison, 2003; Garrison & Arbaugh, 2007), which defines three categories of interconnected presence that determine students’ virtual educational experience: social, cognitive, and teaching presence. Social presence refers to the cohesive, positive and emotional relationships that characterize a learning group (Garrison, 2003). Cognitive presence concerns students’ participation in exploratory and cognitive-challenging online activities to develop reflective thinking, meta-cognition, and self-directed learning (Garrison, 2003). Finally, teaching presence refers to the pedagogical design that facilitates CoI and social and cognitive presence (Garrison et al., 2001; Hajibayova, 2017). Although these three kinds of presence overlap, the three-element framework is often used independently. Most recent studies employed Garrison et al.’s framework to reference social presence more than teaching and cognitive presence (Lowenthal & Dunlap, 2020). For example, some researchers have observed a causal relationship between social presence and students” rate of satisfaction in online studies (Borup et al., 2012) and a connection between social presence and students’ community building (e.g., Delmas, 2017; Richardson et al., 2017). Recent studies that emerged during Covid-19, such as that by Wang et al. (2021), even found that quality teaching presence facilitates the CoI framework and students’ capacity to learn matter-of-factually. Additional studies have built on CoI and have introduced learner presence (Shea et al., 2014), learning presence (Ma et al., 2017), and self-efficacy (Lin et al., 2015) in Garrison et al.’s original framework.

The CoI framework was so influential that Garrison’s team and scholars working in this area developed indicators and sub-categories for each presence. For example, Hughes et al. (2007) explained that to achieve social presence, students should perform specific actions (see Lowenthal & Dunlap, 2020, p. 492). Garrison et al. (2001) subdivided cognitive presence to produce a practice-based plan, including event triggering, exploration, integration and resolution. Meanwhile, Heilporn and Lakhal (2020), as cited in Wang et al. (2021, p. 1497) equated teaching presence to three procedures: “instructional design and organization; direct instruction; and facilitation discourses.” Based on the above-developed indicators or sub-categories of the family of CoI, many other studies have quantified and proposed scales to explore students’ experience of presence in the context of online learning (e.g., Lau et al., 2021). In addition, some recent studies have used these indicators as teaching aims to benchmark the practice of achieving presence (e.g., Parrish et al., 2021).

A “Bodily” Turn in Online Presence?

When CoI is turned into a benchmark for online learning presence in class, presence becomes akin to a consequence of control and judgment rather than a natural sense. A “way of certifying experience” may be better suited to name the elements if CoI controls presence (Coonfield & Rose, 2012, p. 195) because students are expected to be busy editing and controlling themselves so that they can perform better in their CoI tasks. Meanwhile, CoI has gradually developed into a teaching method, although students’ authentic bodily experience receives less attention. Therefore, another school of thought has emerged, positing that learning occurs when a person is immersed in an environment, engaged in a holistic experience characterized by full-sensory emotion and bodily cognition (Stolz, 2015). In other words, learning is embodied (Stolz, 2015).

This belief is derived from the phenomenological tradition, which seeks to explain the world from human experience. Merleau-Ponty (1962, pp. xvi–xvii) stated: “The world is not what I think, but what I live through.” From this perspective, digitalized profiles and live faces are features of mediatization rather than embodied presence (Coonfield & Rose, 2012). Thus, online classes, even when lessons are held via lived streamed video conferences, offer limited reality omitting the key elements provided by stakeholders’ bodily interactions and co-construction (Ucok-Sayrak & Brazelton, 2022, p. 133):

[T]he classroom is inhabited through body, heart, and minds. I am afraid moments like these might be lost in the absence of bodies in the online classroom. Nevertheless, something unique and powerful does happen when we are in each other’s bodily presence.

What Ucok-Sayrak and Brazelton (2022) advocated in teaching was to have the spirit of releasement-toward-things to think aloud about students’ actual circumstances and beings, without which the tasks and demonstrations in online lessons are simply one-dimensional and artificial. The releasement-toward things are what Heidegger (1966) created as the technique of meditative thinking to unconceal the hidden meaning of things against the increasingly technicalised world. Van Gogh’s painting of a peasant’s shoes could be seen as an art of releasement-toward-things because Heidegger (2002) found out such a piece of art unlocked its appreciators’ visions from the technical make and fashion of the shoes, opening an alternative reality of the shoes’ shouldering of all the toils and the heaviness of its owner. To Ucok-Sayrak and Brazelton (2022), lacking bodily presence, online lessons concealed the holistic reality and natural beings of students and teachers, reducing their already-unspontaneous participation in online learning activities to freeze reality.

Berenpas (2021) explained why people tend to find online lessons fail to offer a holistic learning environment and why bodily presence matters. Following Levinas (1985) phenomenology of face, Berenpas (2021) believed that online learning disturbed teachers’ embodied sensitivity to students’ faces, preventing teachers’ ethical attunement to students. Levinas (1985) thought that the human face is the most direct, exposed and self-explanatory part of the body signifying one’s identity, and the face always begs for another’s response and sympathy. So Levinas (1985) believed that face is the ethics of ethics and the foundation of all human relationships. Through computer screens, students’ faces appear plastic, so their needs and emotions cannot be concerned and responded to by teachers; however, from the Levinasian perspective, the key to education lies in teachers’ ethical attunement to students (Berenpas, 2021).

These perspectives explained why some students and colleagues of Shao (2021) and Sun et al. (2021) felt a lack of presence characterized by online learning. However, in phenomenology, there are also critical opinions helping readers question the bodily presence and its impact on online learning. For example, Merleau-Ponty (1973) stressed the universality of human feeling: each person owns a body and lives in the same world, laying a foundation for physically sensing what others sense. Merleau-Ponty (1973, p. 135), thus, named the other person “forever my second.” In this sense, even though teachers and students may not have bodily contact, they may still mutually sense and understand each other. Not only because the student is the teacher’s second self (teachers were once students, making them know students’ needs) but because they are working in the same curriculum for the same course objectives.

Merleau-Ponty (2004) also confirmed the unity of humans, in which every seemingly segregated part is in an affective relationship with the rest. Like how a lemon is inseparable from its sour and yellow, a person is inseparable from his voice, body shape, characteristics, dressing style and even home décor (Merleau-Ponty, 2004, 2019). In some experiences, people all have, for example, recognized somebody by just hearing his voice even without seeing the rest of him. Merleau-Ponty’s (2019) explanation was that people’s lived experiences convinced them that the unnoticed parts of the heard person are still present. Merleau-Ponty (1973, p. 14) particularly stressed that writers’ written (or typed) words could lead to a mutual understanding with readers: “language leads us to things themselves to the precise extent.” It is not only because the language style is a part of a person’s organic unity but also because the interlocutors have bodies, live in the same world, and share the same linguistic and social semiotics. So in online classrooms, even though teachers and students may not perceive each other bodily, they may still hear, see, or read each other, sensing their existence despite absence.

Furthermore, being physically in a classroom does not guarantee embodied presence because students can be physically present while mentally absent. Ucok-Sayrak and Brazelton (2022) particularly emphasized that there should be an attitude of spontaneous, non-judgmental, and non-artificial conduct that holds teachers and students together. Post-digital researchers have reminded readers to recall former educational experiences, assuming there must be examples of students not being meaningfully engaged in the learning process in offline contexts (Fawns et al., 2019). It is noteworthy that presence is not something that could be directly asked because it is about being. The existing opinions of online presence are either constructed by setting a series of identifiable behavioral indicators like in Garrison and Arbaugh (2007) or captured through phenomenological analysis of lived experiences. Therefore, in order to explore Macau students’ feeling of presence in online learning, the following research questions were designed revolving around the students’ behaviors and lived experiences:

Instrumental Case Study

This research employs a case study approach as the research methodology. Case studies require in-depth research into the particularities and complexities of a bounded system (Stake, 1995). Case study research is usually less concerned about the typicality (Stake, 1995) or statistical generalizability (Yin, 2003) of the issue being researched and more with thickness, wholeness, and development in a specific context (Flyvbjerg, 2011). In this study, the chosen fieldwork university can be seen as a unique and bounded system. The Macau students’ experience of presence in online learning is anticipated to have specific and complex issues worthy of exploration. The specificity is afforded by the diversity of the backgrounds of the students at the fieldwork university, as the student population is generally comprised of a small number of Macau local full-time students, part-time local students who study course modules only in the evening, full-time Chinese students from the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other countries. The teachers are also from diverse backgrounds. Such an international outlook at a university is rare in China. Meanwhile, complexity is mainly associated with the disruption to the student’s learning environment brought about by the pandemic. Thus, the case study method is well suited to this topic.

According to Stake (1995, 2005), there are three types of case study research the intrinsic (exploring the peculiarities of a unique issue), the instrumental (that seeks to understand an issue by exploring a representative case), and the collective (or multiple) case study research. This planned research can be classified as an instrumental case study because Stake (1995) emphasized that its purpose concerns not the chosen case itself but our understanding of a phenomenon using the case as a channel. My justification for engaging in instrumental case study research was that students’ learning online in the fieldwork institute during the pandemic was not a unique phenomenon, so it is not an intrinsic study. However, by examining the case in question, it may be possible for us to learn more about students’ feelings of presence in a general sense.

Furthermore, recently published educational studies that adopted an instrumental case study approach all explored either stakeholders’ perceptions of or their praxis in solving specific problems or employing certain strategies (e.g., DeRemer, 2022; Johnson & Jones, 2018; Klein et al., 2019; Owens et al., 2021). The present study was designed to investigate students’ perceptions of presence and their possible personal techniques to achieve it, so using an instrumental case study seems strategically appropriate.

The Research Participants

Choosing a case is not based on its possible representation of other cases but on whether people can maximize their knowledge of an issue. On the latter point, Stake (1995) stressed the legitimacy of the researcher having easy access to a hospital field and communicative research participants. Therefore in the present study, I decided to choose the university I work in as the case site and four students taught by someone other than myself as research participants.

I used the stratified-purposive method to select the research participants. According to Small (2009, p. 14): “[what] an in-depth interview faces is not a ‘bias’ problem but a set of cases with particular characteristics that should be understood, developed, and incorporated into her understanding of the cases at hand.” Thus, my approach to choosing research participants was to let students from every level/mode of the program express how they experienced and coped with their online studies to provide a prism for me to understand the case. However, it was clear that the four students did not represent anybody else in the case study. Meanwhile, another requirement was that they had experienced online learning during the Covid-19 pandemic. Regarding ethical considerations, they should not be currently in my class to avoid a conflict of interest. With these requirements in mind, I implemented purposive sampling to locate participants. Purposive sampling can be used to provide in-depth data on a specific topic from knowledgeable people (Cohen et al., 2011). Although my research participants are not experts, they are knowledgeable about their own experience and can provide rich data. After obtaining ethical approval, I invited six students to participate via email, and eventually, four volunteered to be interviewed. The final interviewees included an undergraduate student, two postgraduate taught students, and a PhD student, and their demographic data are presented in Table 1.

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Table 1.

Participants’ Demographic Data.

	Gender	Program	Years studying at the fieldwork institution	Macau online learning experience
S1	F	BA in Tourism	Year 3	Yes
S2	M	MA in Education	Year 2	Yes
S3	M	PhD in Education	Year 4	Yes
S4	F	MA in Education	Year 1	Yes

Data Collection

Semi-structured interviews were used as the data collection method in the present study. Semi-structured interviews utilize an interview guide for the researcher(s) to follow, allowing the research participants to respond flexibly when expressing themselves. This method is often used when research is focused (Bryman, 2012). The present study has a precise research aim and questions, so this method was chosen for its benefits in data production.

As there were concerns associated with safety during the Covid-19 pandemic (at the time I was meant to be interviewing the students, there was another wave of Covid happening in Macau), all schools, including universities, were closed. Therefore, all the interviews were conducted online via a secure video conference platform, Tencent Meeting. Tencent Meeting is a commonly-used online teaching platform at the fieldwork university, and the interviewees’ familiarity with it made it a convenient choice. Video conferencing allows synchronous video and audio communication, much like the traditional face-to-face interview. In addition, this method is exceptionally flexible, as the interviewer and interviewee can start a conversation at any time and place (Nehls et al., 2015), which was especially practical during the Covid-19 pandemic.

When preparing the interview guide, Bryman (2012) suggests formulating the interview questions so that they answer the research questions while making the language comprehensible to participants and avoiding leading questions. Together with the interview guide, information regarding the use of the interview language (Chinese), options for platforms for online meetings, planned interview time (20–60 min), participant information sheet, and informed consent form were sent to each participant’s university email. In their study, Hobson and Townsend (2010) suggested that the interviewer avoid using leading and ambiguous language when asking questions to establish rapport with the interviewee, avoid any judgmental language, and facilitate interviewees to clarify and extend their arguments without distraction. I applied their advice when implementing the interviews.

Data Analysis

After transcribing the recorded interviews, I used a reflexive thematic analysis to classify the qualitative data. Braun and Clarke (2021) stressed this approach’s flexibility as it involves inductive and deductive logic when coding qualitative data. More importantly, they endorsed the researcher’s reflexive engagement of subjectivity and theories about the analytical process. As qualitative research, this study heavily relies on my interpretation and theorizing about the participants’ perceptions of the research questions. Such an analytical process is recursive, repetitive and requires much reflexivity on the researcher’s part, so I used Braun and Clarke’s (2021) reflexive thematic analysis. Braun and Clarke (2021) recommended a six-phase process, which generally includes: familiarization with the data, systematic coding, initial themes generation, reviewing and defining themes, and report writing. I, therefore, did so accordingly. During the transcription, I attained a basic understanding of the content. I read and reread the transcripts to ensure in-depth penetration, and I also used color highlighters to code texts with similar signified meanings. I formulated a series of themes from the transcripts, which can be seen in the paragraphs of the chapter on findings. Finally, I selectively translated texts relevant to the coded themes into English.

Trustworthiness and Ethical Considerations

Instead of using positivist terms like validity to refer to the quality of qualitative research, Hartas (2010) recommended using the word trustworthiness. To improve the trustworthiness of my study, I used member checking strategies and external auditing, which are strategies taken from among the eight strategies that Creswell (2007) recommended using. He recommended using at least two strategies for research validation. Therefore, I sent the transcription to each research participant for review and confirmation as part of my application for member checking. My EdD supervision committee in Glasgow served as external audit consultants as they read my manuscripts and proffered suggestions. Furthermore, maintaining the ethical standards of the research is another way to improve the study’s trustworthiness because ethical strategies such as retaining the anonymity of the participants and the confidentiality of the data can ensure that the participants speak with less pressure. I was approved to complete the current study by the College of Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee at the University of Glasgow (No. 400210169). After this date, I emailed the research participants, and they expressed their willingness to be interviewed. Thus, I sent them an electronic folder in which documents (including a consent form, Privacy Notice, and interview guide) were included for them to sign electronically and read. In these documents, I assured them that anonymity, the confidentiality of research data, and the principle of voluntary contribution are protected.

How Do Students Describe Their Lived Experience of Online Learning in Contrast With Face-to-Face Classroom Instruction?

Some of the participating students admitted that their feeling of presence was reduced by online learning and that this adversely influenced their study efficacy. The reasons they gave included not being able to have direct communication or eye contact with teachers, being unable to see their peers as they all kept their cameras off due to low net speed, and teachers’ voices diminishing at the other end of microphones. S1 explained why bodily presence is essential when learning something entirely new:

“If you are in a brand new class, you do not understand the class at all. If you learn something online, I think it is difficult because you may not be able to have timely eye contact with your teacher, including when he talks about something. He may use some body language to help you explain. Because when the teacher speaks, his body language can help you solve many problems, and you can ask if you don’t understand. However, if you are online, you may press the raised hand symbol under the computer, or you say something in the comment box, but the teacher is busy talking about his content, and he may not be able to see it in time.” (S1 interview)

Some participants mentioned feelings such as absent-mindedness, being ignored, confused, anxious and isolated when presence is reduced. For example, S1 revealed her feelings of isolation and anxiety after 2 months of learning online at the beginning of the pandemic: “Sometime later, I began worrying because I was always by myself… it’s like you do not know what your classmates are doing, and you may feel afraid of being left behind” (S1 interview). There are also students who questioned the formality of online learning when the requirement of presence is degraded, and some also criticized their peers for not treating online learning seriously:

“I found they became a little absent-minded…sometimes they may forget to turn off the microphones, and you can hear their children’s voices. Some students left classes earlier because the teacher did not notice.” (S3)

“I found a phenomenon which I call informality. It is a bad sign; it means the students gave out all kinds of reasons to avoid the group discussion (when online).” (S2)

“Everyone agreed to share some of the workloads in a homework task… Nevertheless, I felt everyone seemed not to be very active about doing things, and they sometimes failed to finish the task on time. Everyone felt they only had to complete their part without concerning the whole group.” (S1)

However, the participants also confirmed that there were some benefits from online learning. For example, some claimed online classes were more reciprocal and equal as they broke down the deeply rooted discourse of teacher-centered teaching in traditional classrooms. In contrast, others felt it encouraged convenience and flexibility to juggle their studies, interests, work and taking care of families.

RQ2. What Factors Do Students Consider Important to Ensure the Efficacy of Online Learning?

The interviewees mentioned two issues with hardware that could impact the effectiveness of online learning: the selection of teaching platforms and recorded lessons. Regarding the selection of teaching platforms, S3 recommended choosing a platform that could support faster internet speed and commented that everyone could turn their cameras and microphones on without the internet lagging. S1 noted that the online teaching platforms should be accessible to those living on the Chinese mainland, where an internet firewall is cutting users off from many international resources. In terms of recorded lessons, S1 regarded this as significant for new topics: “We learned a module called theories in philosophy that year, and the teaching platform the teacher chose could automatically record his voice so that we could relearn” (S1 interview). However, S1 also raised a further example to point out the limitations affecting the recording of lessons:

“There was a lesson, the teacher did not teach by himself but let us watch a video of a class in the US, which is good as we could watch it many times, but our teacher only appeared twice a month to answer our questions… when were confused, we could not find anyone to help in time!” (S1).

In the opinion of S1, recorded lessons cannot replace the presence of teachers live. The interviewees also called for implementing a policy to maintain the quality of online teaching. After observing some of their peers being absent-minded in online lessons, as mentioned previously, S3 and S2 worried that a relevant policy to discipline students’ online behavior would allow some of their peers to misbehave.

Compared with the aforementioned external factors, the interviewees generally believed that the teacher has an important role in online learning. Firstly, the interviewees pointed out that teachers’ online teaching professionalism matters. Based on the interviews, when professionalism is demonstrated in teachers’ scientific delivery of online lessons, this makes them interactive. S4 exemplified how some of her teachers successfully delivered online teaching:

“Through questioning and problem-oriented teaching, they guided the students' progress… teacher X often asked us to do group readings before class after she had uploaded some materials onto the platform. Then she asked us to do a presentation for every first half an hour of class… She emphasised that each group member must express their opinions in group work. This is another aspect that I think was good.” (S4)

S4 even commented that a scientific pedagogy could mean that online and offline teaching did not differ. Teachers’ professionalism is related to their teaching experience. S1 shared how she thought about the new teachers she met during the semester, in particular referring to those who failed to provide a satisfactory lesson due to lack of experience:

“[H]e kept repeating the problem of grouping students in the first class, like ‘are you sure you want to group like this?’ After we left him messages in the conversation column, he would say: ‘what do you mean?’… it finally drove everyone’s attention away.” (S1)

Secondly, alongside teachers’ professionalism, teachers’ approachability is equally important for online learning; simply speaking, whether teachers are approachable is important. Just as S1 argued:

“If I were a teacher, I might get communications software and build a chat group, which would be much better than email. This may be more efficient, and you would know that your teacher is in this chat group. The feeling is good.” (S1)

S4 reflected that teachers providing timely feedback is an important manifestation of their approachability:

“Some teachers like to guide individual students to write papers. In terms of giving students homework feedback, some teachers adopted excellent practices… They asked us to upload assignments in a word file, then circled problems and gave comments via track changes in the online platform.” (S4)

However, S4 did not consider this equal to the importance of students giving feedback to teachers in online teaching, although S2 mentioned it.

How Did the Students Overcome the Challenges They Encountered When Learning Online?

To address classmates’ difficulties logging into online learning platforms, such as MS Teams, S3 often sent links to classmates, inviting them individually. In addition, S2 often sent reminders to his classmates when they could not accomplish tasks the teacher set. Finally, S4 explained how her group members cooperated successfully online by discovering the affordances and functions of some platforms:

“When there was group work for us, we first established a collaborative learning online group. We tried to take advantage of some technology platforms, such as online editing document software like Google Docs. In this way, it is helpful for us to co-write a work synchronously. Of course, this has a drawback; after we have co-edited, we must make a general format adjustment later. Later, to satisfy different group members' pace of life, we used a good feature in Tronclass called the group discussion room. In this room, the group leader could set a deadline for a project, and all members could send reminders to other participants to ensure they complete work on time. Only internal members could see the messages and documents shared in the group’s room.” (S4 interview)

Knowing the affordances of e-learning platforms to facilitate online group learning, S4 admitted that online learning depends heavily on an individual’s self-control, time, and project management, whereas S4 believes this is the foundation of effective learning regardless of the environment. When S2 cannot follow the teachers’ pace, he typically does more reading and research after class to compensate. S1 said she learnt to be a “net friend” with her teacher to provide timely feedback to the teacher via video conferencing. She also needed to email her teachers to clarify tasks after class. However, what S1 said that impressed me the most is how she learnt to relax and balance her life and studies, regardless of whether she was in online or offline mode:

All things should be balanced, which means you may be learning or doing some other things, but you will have a certain amount of pressure. You have to find a place and relax; I will choose to exercise or write a diary. After writing, you feel suddenly cheerful. I think this is not only something I could do during the pandemic; it seems that most of the time, it is the same. Because whether online or offline, your will encounter different problems when learning. It depends on how to look at it.” (S1 interview)

S1 and S2 both represented themselves as independent learners. Thus, independent learning was important for their online learning except for peer collaboration and support.