Since student retention in online courses is related to the students' community, this dissertation explores the effect of discussion board prompt format on students' sense of community of inquiry (CoI). The quasi-experimental study design examined the participation levels, sense of CoI (i.e., social, teaching, and cognitive presence), and final grade of nontraditional, fully online undergraduate students in an entry-level graphic design course in the Graphic Arts Department at a fully online college. The study involved 90 undergraduate students in the Graphic Arts Department at a fully online college. The study consisted of four groups: one control group who experienced the text-based discussion prompts and three experimental groups who experienced one of the asynchronous video discussion prompts (i.e., voice-over-presentation, picture-in-picture, or overlay mode). A one-way ANOVA was used to examine if the number of discussion posts made by students was significant different across groups. The same analysis was used to examine whether there was a significant difference in student's final grade among the groups. A one-way multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was used to determine if the format of facilitation for weekly discussion prompts in the online courses influenced online, nontraditional undergraduate students' sense of Community of Inquiry (CoI) (i.e., social, teaching, and cognitive presence) while controlling for the CoI pretest. All results were non-significant. Keywords: Community of Inquiry, cognitive presence, social presence, teaching presence, overlay mode, picture-in-picture presentation, voice over presentation attrition, meaningful learning, persistence, retention, and online education.