Online Learning Experiences in the COVID-19 Era: A Look at the Collaborative Learning, Sense of Community, and Social Presence of University Students in the UAE

University teaching around the world has been heavily disrupted by the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, the last year has seen a major shift in teaching and learning from the traditional face-to-face mode to one heavily dependent on the interactive technologies of the Internet. Despite the challenges that this new mode of teaching poses, it brings with it innovative opportunities for sociability, collaboration, and community building in the classroom. Representing a first phase of a larger study, this paper looks at the social side of online learning throughout the pandemic, exploring connections between the sense of community, collaborative learning, and social presence of university students. A web survey was employed to uncover these connections and 609 responses were collected from undergraduate and postgraduate students across 9 colleges at a large UAE university. The results show significant and positive, yet moderate correlations between (a) sense of community and collaborative learning experiences, (b) sense of community and social presence, and (c) collaborative learning experiences and social presence. These results are expected to inform the design and execution of online learning models, even in a post-pandemic reality, as teachers are recommended to facilitate their students’ social experiences by encouraging discussion, co-operation, and synchronous communication.