Connected, but Not Always Engaged: What ComIT Taught Me About Online Learning

🎙 iLearn.tw · rosscline.com Radio Podcast · Episode 4

Connected, but Not Always Engaged

What ComIT Taught Me About Online Learning

Ross Cline · University of New Brunswick · 10 min 48 s

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I have completed a podcast reflecting on my experience as an adult learner in ComIT’s online digital marketing course, as part of my studies at the University of New Brunswick.

I spent fifteen years operating an English-language teaching business in Taiwan. After returning to Canada, I enrolled in ComIT’s online digital marketing course.

The course covered website development, search engine optimization, paid advertising, social media, email marketing, analytics, and digital strategy.

I successfully completed the course, graduated, and gave an excellent final presentation.

However, my learning experience was complicated. Many lessons felt dry and heavily dependent on presentation slides. Communication occasionally caused confusion, particularly around scheduling the final presentation.

At the same time, I met memorable classmates, developed practical skills, created a fictional hot-pot restaurant website, and gained a new appreciation for my existing experience with Shopify and other digital technologies.

The podcast examines these experiences through two educational theories:

1. Michael Moore’s Transactional Distance Theory.
2. Garrison, Anderson, and Archer’s Community of Inquiry framework.

The central message is that meaningful learning can occur even when the instructional experience is not particularly engaging. Technology connects people, but meaningful human connection requires more than technology.

0:00 · Introduction

Hello, this is Ross Cline. And my first attempt at this was 24 minutes, so I decided to try to stay on track and not veer off too much from the topic here. Connected, but Not Always Engaged: What ComIT Taught Me About Online Learning. My name is Ross Cline, and I welcome you to my podcast for a course at the University of New Brunswick. The title is Connected, but Not Always Engaged: What ComIT Taught Me About Online Learning.

I spent most of my adult life in education. I ran my own English school in Taiwan for 15 years, and I’ve taught people online for years. So there’s a certain irony in this story. I love being the teacher, being the student, not very much at all.

After returning to Canada and rebuilding my working life in my 40s, I enrolled in ComIT’s online digital marketing course. We covered websites, SEO, paid advertising, email marketing, social media, and analytics. The classes were on Zoom with Slack for communication, and I did graduate with flying colors, I might add, but was it inspiring? Well, that’s another question.

1:30 · Theory 1: Transactional Distance

The first theory is Michael Moore’s transactional distance theory, from 1993. Moore makes an important distinction. Distance education isn’t simply two people being geographically separated. It’s the psychological and communication gap between teacher and learner.

He identifies three elements: dialogue, structure, and learner autonomy. Dialogue isn’t just somebody talking while everybody else listens. It’s a meaningful exchange where students ask questions and contribute. Structure means how fixed or flexible a course is. And autonomy is how much responsibility learners take for directing their own learning.

Here’s what stuck with me. Zoom can be wonderfully interactive. I know because I teach through it. Yet, in ComIT, it often felt as though the instructor was moving through prepared slides, and we were just there to absorb information, dry, terribly boring sometimes, like we were doing our proverbial time to get our certificate and get out of there.

The teacher clearly knew his subject, but knowing it and making it come alive for students are different skills. Moore warns that video conferencing can become so structured that it starts behaving like a one-way instruction. Amen to that. I read it and thought, well, there’s ComIT right there.

Then there’s Slack. I’m sure it works beautifully for some people, but personally, I wonder why everything nowadays needs its own application. Whatever happened to a good old-fashioned email, whatever happened to just using email, and BCCing people, you know? Anyway, that’s the dinosaur in me.

Near the end, I misunderstood how to arrange my final presentation. The wording led me to expect a booking link when, apparently, I was supposed to contact somebody directly. As a lifelong English teacher, I took the wording quite literally. There was a real scare about whether I could complete the course. Thankfully, it was resolved. I gave a great presentation and graduated.

But it left an impression. Could I have asked more questions? Absolutely. Could the instructions have been clearer? Absolutely, as well. I mean, that’s that. That’s Moore’s point about communication. Sending information doesn’t mean the intended meaning arrives at the other end.

4:22 · Challenging the theory

Now, here’s where I challenge the theory. Bolliger and Halupa’s 2018 study found a relationship between transactional distance and engagement. That makes sense to me. But I wasn’t especially engaged with those lectures, and I still learned useful things. I could take material from a dull presentation and do something with it afterwards. It begs the case for, maybe if we do our proverbial time, we are getting something almost through osmosis.

Ottenheim and colleagues, writing in 2025 about hybrid education, suggested that deliberate structure could actually help dialogue. Now a hybrid classroom isn’t exactly the same as our online class. Still, it raises a good question. Was ComIT too structured, or just structured in the wrong places? Plenty of slides, but not enough conversation, or clarity when it really mattered.

5:33 · Theory 2: Community of Inquiry

My second theory is community of inquiry, developed by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer. It has three overlapping elements: teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence. Teaching presence is how the instructor designs and guides learning. Social presence is whether we experience each other as real people. Cognitive presence is whether we actually work through ideas and develop understanding.

Teaching presence certainly existed at ComIT. We had an experienced instructor, an organized course, but social presence, that’s where my memories get interesting.

I’ve always said, turn your background blur off. Show us where you are. Open up, show your whole face. Keep your camera on. Many students kept their cameras off for quite a while, and we were anonymous, names on the screen. Like seeing faces and backgrounds, that helps me feel somebody’s genuinely there. Of course, people have different privacy needs, and I guess that’s just the way it is.

One classmate was wonderfully candid and spontaneous. I remember her. Sometimes she didn’t really know when to turn her microphone off when she would talk to her cat. But in hindsight, I remember her very fondly.

I got to know another student, and we had a separate call about a technical issue, and I got to know who he was and where he was from and things like this. He had years of experience in a field that was quite new to me. There were a few breakout rooms and some genuinely lovely people. In fact, one connection even led me to teaching English to newcomers in New Brunswick. So something meaningful did come out of those relationships and that course.

Shea, Li and Pickett’s 2006 study linked teaching presence with students’ sense of learning community. I understand that, but my strongest connections developed quite naturally, not because of some grand classroom exercise.

Then there’s cognitive presence. One project was to invent a business and build its website. I created a hot pot restaurant in Fredericton, with a logo, menu, and website. It looked very cute, if I do say so myself. Even if nobody ever ate there, I enjoyed doing that. It was creative and practical, and exploring Wix and Squarespace made me appreciate all those years I’d spent tinkering with Shopify. Time well wasted, apparently.

8:20 · A criticism of Community of Inquiry

Here’s my criticism of community of inquiry. Does it give enough attention to the learner? To what the learner brings to the classroom? I already had 15 years of business experience, and I was independently exploring AI and different website platforms.

Chang and colleagues, in 2026, discuss adding learning presence, or motivation and self-regulation, as a fourth element. That fits my experience, and Maré and Mutezo’s 2025 review shows there are still questions about how participation, self-regulation, and shared learning work together.

Anderson and Dron argued in 2011 that no single approach answers every educational need. I agree. Sometimes you need clear instruction. Sometimes conversation. Sometimes somebody needs to get out of the way and let you create something.

9:28 · Three recommendations

So three recommendations from my experience.

1. First, make live classes more interactive: fewer slides, more chances to talk, and actually try things.
2. Second, use simple, unmistakable instructions for deadlines and presentations, preferably with a direct reminder.
3. Third, build in practical projects and small group conversations, so students can learn from each other’s experiences, as well as the instructor.

10:00 · Was ComIT worth it?

Was ComIT worth it? Ah, yeah, I think it was. I graduated, made something I was proud of, met memorable people, and gained skills I use. The course reminded me how not to confuse delivering information with helping someone learn.

The Zoom link can connect two computers. It takes a little more imagination, flexibility, and humanity to connect two people. And perhaps that’s what I remember long after the slides are forgotten.

Thank you very much for listening, and I apologize for my amateur way of pronouncing some of their names. I hope you found this a little enjoyable. Cheers.

Anderson, T., & Dron, J. (2011). Three generations of distance education pedagogy. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 12(3), 80–97. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v12i3.890

Bolliger, D. U., & Halupa, C. (2018). Online student perceptions of engagement, transactional distance, and outcomes. Distance Education, 39(3), 299–316. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2018.1476845

Chang, C.-C., Yen, W.-H., Liu, S.-C., & Kuo, C.-T. (2026). Learning presence in the revised community of inquiry framework: A systematic review of empirical research (2010–2024). The Internet and Higher Education, 68, Article 101058. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2025.101058

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2–3), 87–105. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1096-7516(00)00016-6

Maré, S., & Mutezo, A. T. (2025). The community of inquiry, shared metacognition, and student engagement in online learning: A systematic review. Interactive Learning Environments, 33(9), 5213–5234. https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2025.2479164

Moore, M. G. (1993). Theory of transactional distance. In D. Keegan (Ed.), Theoretical principles of distance education (pp. 22–38). Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Theoretical-Principles-of-Distance-Education-1st-Edition/Keegan/p/book/9780415089425

Ottenheim, V., Meulenbroeks, R., & Drijvers, P. (2025). Transactional distance revisited: A review for the case of hybrid education. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, 27(2), Article 10. https://doi.org/10.65043/eurodl.173

Shea, P., Li, C. S., & Pickett, A. (2006). A study of teaching presence and student sense of learning community in fully online and web-enhanced college courses. The Internet and Higher Education, 9(3), 175–190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2006.06.005