Few studies examine how instructor power is communicated in online learning environments. Communicating instructor influence can positively impact learning and success, but doing so is challenging online. This case study analyzes how community of inquiry theory enables instructors to communicate influence and allows for a systematic gauge of its effectiveness.
Instructor-student communication and the social interactions that occur in the classroom are key components in helping to determine students’ motivation, learning, and academic success (Rausch & Crawford, 2012). Research about power in the classroom—the ways instructors communicate influence to students, to what extent students are motivated by these communication strategies, and how students exert power themselves—has been a compelling area of study since the early 1980s (McCroskey & Richmond, 1983). Since then, much has been investigated about how influence is communicated and why influence matters to student learning and performance.
Despite these developments, research about instructor power has focused primarily on face-to-face interactions between students and instructors as well as the synchronous verbal and non-verbal communication that occur in the physical classroom. Few studies have examined how instructor power is communicated in the online learning environment. Communicating instructor power online is challenging, in particular because asynchronous communication is often used in online environments and that many verbal and nonverbal messages cannot easily be replicated online.
I investigate the ways community of inquiry (COI) theory may be used as a framework to recommend strategies for online instructors to effectively communicate instructor power. I use COI theory to examine how instructors and students perceived instructor power being communicated in online graduate seminars, and I observed how instructor power was communicated through selected classroom artifacts and respond to these research questions:
- How do instructors communicate power in online graduate seminars?
- How do students perceive and respond to these communications of power?
- To what extent are features of power associated with COI teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence?
Research examining the ways instructor power circulates in online learning environments and locating how this power relates to COI, a theoretical lens used to analyze the impact of various presences on student learning, may help establish more transparent strategies for considering how power is communicated online. Instructors teaching online will benefit as they can incorporate influence strategies more definably into their pedagogy and more systematically gauge their effectiveness. Additionally, considerations of power have not been analyzed specific to COI: doing so will help to better characterize COI’s use as a pedagogical and research tool.
Theory
COI is a theoretical framework identifying “crucial prerequisites” of a “successful higher educational experience” and how these should function in a computer-mediated environment (Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 2000, p. 87). A community is comprised of an instructor and students, and all need to be “present” in different ways to cultivate an environment conducive to “deep and meaningful learning” (Rourke & Kanuka, 2009, p. 23). Three presences constitute a COI: teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence.
Cognitive presence is characterized by students’ sustained interaction with and reflection about course material and creating meaning and reflecting on their learning to confirm their understanding of complex processes (Stewart, 2017). Instructors assist by scaffolding the “process of critical inquiry”: setting up a complex problem and helping students to research, apply, and test their recommendations (Garrison & Cleveland-Innes, 2005, p. 134). Students should acquire a set of behaviors and actions constituting cognitive presence, with the other presences supporting the engagement of cognitive presence.
Social presence recognizes that interacting with class members fosters cognitive presence and cultivates deep learning (Wang & Wang, 2012). COI does not support the myth of the isolated learner. Instead instructors need to cultivate social presence by creating a trusting learning environment and facilitating student collaboration around a common set of intellectual tasks.
Teaching presence is achieved through thoughtfully designing the course, facilitating discourse among participants, providing direct instruction, and offering feedback. A positive correlation exists between teaching presence and student motivation (Baker, 2010) and between teaching presence and healthy social presence (Shea, Li, & Pickett, 2006
Methods
After receiving IRB approval, I used convenience sampling to select two online graduate seminars (OGSs) from each of the three colleges at my university. Four of the six OGS instructors and 8 of 58 students agreed to participate. I interviewed participants individually in 30-minute audio-taped interviews during weeks 1 of the 15-week semester and again during week 15. Instructors did not know which students were participating in the study. Course syllabi, major projects assignment sheets, discussion board prompts, and instructor feedback were collected. Participants commented on the materials and I analyzed their responses and the texts themselves.
Results, Conclusions, Discussion
COI and its lenses of cognitive presence, teaching presence, and social presence provide one model for instructors to use to communicate power in the online classroom. Teaching presence and cognitive presence use approaches culled from an expert power base. The study recommends that online instructors adopt concrete strategies involving direct instruction, promoting discourse, providing feedback, and proper course design, which allow instructors to provide scaffolded, challenging ways for students to learn and apply course concepts. An effectively communicated teaching presence also communicates instructor knowledge and competency: a viable means for communicating power to students. The lens of social presence uses a referent power base and recommends that online instructors cultivate an environment encouraging open communication and a trusting climate. Students identify with class members as “real” participants in their shared learning experience. Social presence affords students a positive environment, motivating student learning.
Instructor-participants stated they communicated power through several means relevant to teaching presence, including course design and organization (“how I set up the course… and how I talk about what my role is … and how I organize and curate content”) and feedback (“the way I respond to students when they are either not quite meeting expectations or meeting them or meeting them well”). Instructors organized course material strategically: “I guess the way that I do it is by the pace with which I instruct.” This approach not only scaffolds content to help students move more readily from one unit or concept to the next but also builds student confidence. An instructor teaching a quantitative-based course commented, “I go backwards, and I start at such a fundamental level that it builds confidence in what they’re already scared of. I say, ‘Can you add?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Okay, good. We’re going to try that. Subtract? Well, you are well on your way.’” This pacing approach encourages students to develop cognitive presence (how to understand concepts sufficiently to apply them to future work) but also cultivates social presence in that the focus on “confidence building” intentionally builds trust with students (I understand your uncertainty—this strategy is meant to address that).
Relationship-building also helps instructors communicate power: “through personal conversations that I'm having with students … but also to talk about their … major project and give them a sense of where we’re going with that project and … how I see it.” Thus, student interactions provide opportunities for trust- and relationship-building (social presence) as well as methods for feedback and direct instruction (teaching presence, cognitive presence). Last, instructors also communicated power by referring to their experience with course content: “Look, [in my career] I’ve done this with 1,200 students. If you show up and you’re willing this fits with what you’re going to do in your profession.” Direct references to faculty knowledge and experience draws from the expert power base.
The implications for the study are two-fold. First, this application of the COI model shows the importance of not conflating communicating power in the face-to-face classroom with communicating power online. Adopting influence strategies that are uniquely derived for online learning helps to highlight each environment’s unique qualities and may enable instructors to more systematically select messaging and pedagogies that enable productive communication of power online rather than relying on ad hoc strategies better suited for a face-to-face classroom. Second, applying the lenses of teaching, cognitive, and social presence to the problem of communicating power online may showcase another facet of the COI model itself. Until now, no studies have examined the ways instructor and student power is imbued in the construction of teaching, social or cognitive presence. This particular application of the COI model may serve as a first step in that examination.