In light of this verification it is suggested that the CoI framework and three constructs of teaching, social, and cognitive presence represents a valid model for delineating, explicating students’ online collaborative learning community in across-disciplines knowledge domains.

Future research can contribute to further test whether influence of the social network tie between teacher and students on students perception of cognitive presence, which in turn to enhance their learning.

While this study examined the responses from a relative small sample size, the results should be interpreted with a degree of cautions.

As IPBL demonstrated its growing importance of interdisciplinary integration in professional education, more research should be devoted to verify the influences of teaching and social presence on cognitive presence for students in different online learning settings.

Previous study have shown that IPBL can facilitate leaners to develop knowledge management process and fulfill their satisfaction while collaborating in designing interdisciplinary projects.

This could provide the empirical evidence for the need for future research in exploring the dynamic
relationships among the presences across disciplines and online learning settings.

This could provide the empirical evidence for the need for future research in exploring the dynamic
relationships among the presences across disciplines and online learning settings.

This could provide the empirical evidence for the need for future research in exploring the dynamic
relationships among the presences across disciplines and online learning settings.

Moreover, a significant direct effect of program on cognitive presence was found particularly in the
program of interdisciplinary study.

The results verified the theoretical assumption of CoI framework, showing that students’ perceptions of teaching presence and social presence predicted the significant effects on perceptions of cognitive presence.

The online conferencing platform was provided to further access students’ engagement and group interaction.

They conducted an empirical study to test the relationships among three presences from the students enrolled in the programs of interdisciplinary study and distance education in courses cross multiple subject areas in social science domain.

As scholars pointed out, unique patterns of relationships among three presences are
formulated within different disciplines as giving the interactive and inquiry-based focus of online communities of inquiry.

With the support of online collaborative tools, students with different domain knowledge are able to co-construct knowledge and make connections with other learners and professionals, which in turn to develop a deeper sense of learning community and collaborative inquiry.

IPBL could prepare learners to collaborate in a learning environment in which complex tasks can be accomplished with an abundance of available collaborative tools through the internet, which made the trace of the collaborative activities and interactions more possible than ever before.

As a creative pedagogic approach, IPBL could further integrate and work more effectively through the use of online collaborative technologies.