Background: Online learning and teaching were globally popularized due to the impact of COVID-19. The pandemic has made both synchronous and asynchronous online learning inevitable in regions privileged with the technological affordance. Aims: This study was designed to examine and compare the effectiveness of both learning modes through the Community of Inquiry framework. Materials & Methods: Comparative analyses on a sample of N = 170 undergraduate students who took both synchronous and asynchronous online courses in Spring 2021. Results: The paired-sample T-tests results indicated a significant difference in social presence, cognitive presence and self-evaluated performance. Discussion & Conclusion: Teaching presence significantly influenced social presence and cognitive presence in both learning modes. However, under synchronous learning mode, social presence significantly impacted self-evaluation, grades and school identification. While social presence only influenced school identification under asynchronous learning mode. Theoretical and practical implications were also included.