The Community of Inquiry framework developed by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) can be considered a unique theoretical framework to the online education. It supports collaborative learning and discourse associated with higher levels of online learning. It aligns with the standards in Sloan-C, QM Rubrics, iNacol, QOCI, and SREB.
Introduction
Designing a quality online course requires the instructor to spend much time and energy. The instructor needs to know how to design online courses interactively and effectively for teaching and learning activities. Some research on online learning effectiveness has been done over the years, but the selection and the acceptance of a unique theoretical framework to the online educational environment are still in need of research and adaptation. Among the emerging models of online learning effectiveness such as the Peer Coaching for Online Instruction developed by Tonkin and Baker (2005), the framework for Technology-Mediated Learning developed by Alavi and Leidner (2001), a model of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) theory and research for instructional designer developed by Brandon and Hollingshead (1999), the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework developed by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) has been commonly used in designing online courses. The CoI framework supports collaborative learning and discourse associated with higher levels of online learning, it encourages the social, cognitive, and teaching presence in the general online education community, and it aligns with the standards in Sloan-C Quality Scorecard (2014), Quality Matters (QM) Rubrics (2011), National Standards for Quality Online Teaching (iNacol) (2008), Quality Online Course Initiative (QOCI) (2006), and Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) (2006).
The purpose of this article is to pinpoint some suggestions for instructors who want to design online courses based on the CoI framework developed by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000). There are two main sections in the article: The first part of the article will briefly summarize the CoI framework, and the most part of the article will suggest some practices for instructors designing online courses.
The Summary of the Community of Inquiry Framework (CoI Framework)
Garrison, et al. (2000) developed the CoI framework. The researchers contended that successful higher educational experience should be achieved from a community of inquiry in which the engagement of people and the critical thinking took place. The framework consists of three elements: Cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence that are demonstrated in the Figure 1: Elements of an Educational Experience below.
https://coi.athabascau.ca/coi-model/
(Figure 1: Elements of an Educational Experience)
Cognitive Presence
According to Garrison, et al. (2000), cognitive presence is a crucial element in critical thinking that is necessary to be built and developed for students in higher education. They argued that cognitive presence in online learning is developed through the four step process: Triggering event, exploration, integration, and resolution. In the triggering event process, learners identify the issue or problem for more inquiry or investigation. In the exploration process, learners explore the identified issue or problem through the discourse. In the integration process, learners integrate the explored ideas from the exploration process. Finally, in the resolution process, learners are able to apply what they have explored in the early process to the new educational contexts.
Social Presence
Garrison, et al. (2000) defined social presence in online learning as the ability of learners to project themselves to the community. They categorized social presence in virtual learning environments into three categories: Emotional expression, open communication, and group cohesion. Emotional presence in educational communication is the outward expression of an individual’s emotion or feeling in a community of inquiry as they interact with the learning technology, course content, students, and the instructor. Open communication refers to the purposeful and interactive nature of communication, such as continuing a discussion thread, asking questions and getting feedback, expressing appreciation, or expressing an agreement with risk-free expression. Open communication is also known as mutual awareness and recognition of each other's contributions. Group cohesion reflects the shared social identity of the community and encourages collaboration. This category focuses on collaborative communication to build interaction and empathy.
Teaching Presence
Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) contended that teaching presence is crucial to balance the cognitive presence and social presence to achieve the effective educational outcomes. They pointed out three categories of teaching presence indicators: Instructional management, building understanding, and direct instruction. Instructional management deals with planning, such as curriculum, course design, assessment, and medium or tools to implement the teaching activities. Building understanding in online education is concerned with the academic integrity of collaborative community of learners. Through the interaction, the instructor encourages individual contributions and facilitates educational communication. One more category is the direct instructions that deal with the instructor’s responsibilities. The instructor is to scaffold the learners, guide, direct, and facilitate discussions, analyze comments, presenting content, and use different means of assessment and feedback for student work. The instructor plays a role as a content and pedagogical experts for learners.
Practices for Instructors
The CoI framework has been commonly used in designing online courses because it supports collaborative learning and discourse associated with higher levels of online learning, and it aligns with the standards and practices in Sloan-C Quality Scorecard (2014), QM Rubrics (2011), iNacol (2008), QOCI (2006), and SREB (2006). The standards or practices mainly focus on Course Overview and Introduction, Instructional Design, Assessment and Evaluation, Course Technology, Learner Activities and Learner Interaction, Learner Support, Instructional Materials, and Accessibility and Usability for online course development.
The CoI Framework allows instructors to become content, pedagogical, and technological experts. Instructors have plenty opportunities to create teaching activities to motivate cognitive presence for students. Bloom's Taxonomy (Bloom, 1956) involves knowledge and the development of intellectual skills. Designing activities for discussions, debate prompts, problem-based projects or assignments for the course maximize the ‘Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation’ process from students. Tools for these activities in online education may be discussion forums, group discussions, assignments, blogs, or journals.
In addition, the CoI framework guides instructors in creating teaching activities to motivate learners’ social presence. The first strategy to maintain a social presence is to facilitate online discussions. Instructors should facilitate and model discussion comments on one's opinions, evaluations, reflections to enhance the sense of a learning community. Instructors should often access the discussion forum, post or comment on students’ messages at least one message a day, encourage student dialogues, and reply a message via email as soon as possible (Rovai, 2007). The second strategy to maintain learner’s social presence is to require students to participate in graded discussion assignments that generate extrinsic motivation for students and have the additional benefit of increasing a sense of community (An, Shin, & Lim, 2009). Tools for the learning activities may be discussion forums, announcements, course email, ZOOM meetings, social media sites (e.g., Facebook, Google Hangouts, or Skype).
Teaching presence is the design, facilitation, and direction of cognitive and social processes for the purpose of achieving the effective educational outcomes. The first thing instructors should do is to plan and prepare the online course. For an online learning environment, the emphasis shifts from preparing class sessions to preparing learning modules with specific learning goals, learning activities such as reading assignments, brief instructional materials (e.g., recorded lectures, videos, or audios), discussion posting requirements, and assessment procedures (Fink 2005). Next, instructors facilitate online discourse during the course. Palloff and Prat (2011) mentioned that instructors’ skillful facilitation helps students to interact with one another and with the instructor at a high level. The facilitation is critical to maintaining interest, motivation, and engagement of students in the active learning environment. Instructors may have some fun activities like self-introduction, so students can introduce themselves to the class and find commonalities with other students. Also, instructors may establish a netiquette policy at the beginning of the course to students, so they understand the expectations for the online discourse. Finally, students perceive teaching presence through the instructor’s direct instruction. Direct instruction is about academic and pedagogic leadership that offers choice and opportunity for students to assume responsibility for their learning (Garrison & Vaughan, 2008). Direct instruction may include course presentations, demonstrations and knowledge dissemination that instruct, clarify, summarize, and correct students’ understandings and frame their performance against stated learning objectives. Tools for the teaching and learning activities may be discussion forums, announcement, modules, assignments, ZOOM meetings, or other synchronous social media sites like Skype, Google Hangout, Lync, or Yahoo!Messenger.
Conclusion
Online courses and online programs have been booming at many universities in recent years. It is important to choose and to adapt an effective existing framework to online course development and delivery. This article highlights the CoI framework and suggests it being useful for facilitating interactions in online courses. The framework consists of three elements: Cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence that gives instructors plenty of opportunities to design teaching activities for the course that align with standards or practices such as Sloan-C Quality Scorecard, QM Rubrics, iNacol, QOCI, and SREB. Also, the article suggests some activities that the instructor can design interactive online activities for students in the online environment.
References
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