A Research on the Relationship between Teaching Presence and Online Learners' Basic Psychological Needs

The satisfaction of online learners' basic psychological needs of competence, autonomy and relatedness is an important condition to ensure the quality of learning. Through questionnaire survey, descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and regression analysis, the paper explores the relationship between teaching presence and basic psychological needs. The results show that: (1) Learners' perceived teaching presence and their own psychological needs has met the general level. The perception of four dimensions of teaching presence from highest priority to lowest is Direct Instruction (DI), Course Design & Organization (CD), Discourse Promotion & Guidance (DP), Evaluation & Feedback (EF). Satisfaction of autonomy is higher than the other two dimensions, and relationship is the least satisfied. (2) Teaching presence has a significant positive effect on the satisfaction of psychological needs. The results show that Course Design & Organization and Direct Instruction have a positive effect on three kinds of needs; Discourse PromotionG Evaluation&Feedback has a positive effect on competence and autonomy satisfaction. Therefore, in order to enhance students' psychological needs and learning quality, we should improve the overall design of courses, emphasize the guidance of discourse, precise teaching content and strengthen learning evaluation.