What Affects Students’ Academic Performance and Soft Skills Based on the Community of Inquiry (CoI) Theory?

Abstract

Students with academic performance and soft skills should be concerned with the learning process because it is a learning achievement. This research aims to find the factors affecting academic performance and soft skills. In this pandemic, learning is done online, so interaction between students and lecturers becomes limited. The quantitative data are collected by distributing the questionnaires. The population of this study is 2nd-semester students of the Faculty of Economics, Universitas Negeri Semarang (UNNES), who use online learning from the beginning of the lecture. The population were 900 students, with a sample of 276 students. Data were tabulated and analyzed using SEM-PLS. The results showed that cognitive presence, teaching presence, and social presence positively and significantly (57.9%) affect students' academic performance, and 49.1% affect students' soft skills. The order of factors that most affect academic performance is teaching presence (41.4%), social presence (31.1%), and cognitive presence (11.7%) whereas the order of factors that most affect soft skills is social presence (48.9%), cognitive presence (11.7%), and teaching presence (11.1%). It means that the Community of Inquiry (CoI) theory can explain the magnitude of the factors on academic performance and soft skills in the good category. It is suggested that the related parties to support students to achieve better academic performance and soft skills.