Community of Inquiry (CoI) Framework and Image
Teaching Presence
Teaching presence is defined as the design, facilitation, and direction of cognitive and social processes for the purpose of realizing personally meaningful and educational worthwhile learning outcomes (Anderson, Rourke, Garrison, & Archer, 2001). Examples of teaching presence include:
- Designing the course structure, curriculum (including activities, assessments, resources), selecting the technology or delivery mode
- Moderating/guiding/focusing discussion among students, identifying students not engaged to offer support
- Direct instruction through presentation of content, assessment of students’ progress, and providing feedback
Cognitive Presence
Cognitive presence is the extent to which learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2001). This is the presence where learning occurs through critical thinking. There are four stages within cognitive presence that facilitate critical thinking:
- Triggering event – introduction of a topic, issue, problem
- Exploration – discussion, searching for information, critique and analysis
- Integration – the construction/development of knowledge or a students’ own understanding by integrating the various components of the exploration stage
- Resolution – apply the constructed knowledge to practice and draw conclusions to demonstrate understanding or knowledge acquisition
Social Presence
Social presence can be defined as the ability of learners to project their personal characteristics into the community of inquiry, thereby presenting themselves as ‘real people (Rourke, Anderson, Garrison, & Archer, 2001). Students’ ability to engage and communicate with each other showing their ‘real’ selves supports the development of cognitive presence by building a community of learners for collaborative critical thinking and inquiry. To establish social presence in an online space, the following strategies could be deployed:
- Use of emotional expression: Since online communication tends to rely heavily on text-based communication, facial and oral expression is often lost. The use of emoticons provides symbolic representation of students and teachers emotions or the use of audio comments when feasible.
- Establishing trust: It can sometimes take time to establish trust among a cohort of students to be able to freely discuss and critique each other appropriately in an online space. However, by disclosing information about yourself such as your feelings, experiences, and interest, you will begin to make them more comfortable with disclosing information about themselves as well. As information is shared, trust will slowly start to build. For example, including an online forum where they are asked to share something about their interests or experiences will help them get to know you as the teacher and start to trust you but they will also reciprocate and begin to trust and share with each other. This will be useful later in the course where you might want them to debate issues or provide constructive criticism to each other.
- Awareness of online contributions: Not only for the teacher but also to encourage the students to be aware of each others’ online contributions and to acknowledge them. Indicating that they agree with someone’s comments, understand someone’s comments but disagree with it, or encourage each others’ work, helps build a community where students will more likely want to contribute their ideas as they will feel they are valued.
Optional Literature
Anderson, T., Rourke, L., Garrison, D. R., Archer, W. (2001). Assessing Teaching presence in a Computer Conference Environment. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 5(2), 1-17. Retrieved from http://cde.athabascau.ca/coi_site/documents/Anderson_Rourke_Garrison_Archer_Teaching_Presence.pdf
Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education model. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3), 87-105. Retrieved from http://cde.athabascau.ca/coi_site/documents/Garrison_Anderson_Archer_Critical_Inquiry_model.pdf
Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2001). Critical Thinking, Cognitive Presence, and Computer Conferencing in Distance Education. American Journal of Distance Education, 15(1), 7-23. Retrieved from http://cde.athabascau.ca/coi_site/documents/Garrison_Anderson_Archer_CogPres_Final.pdf
Garrison, D.R, Cleveland-Innes, M., & Fung, M. T. S. (2010). Exploring causal relationships among teaching, cognitive and social presence: Student perceptions of the community of inquiry framework. The Internet and Higher Education, 13(1–2), 31–36. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2009.10.002
Rourke, L., Anderson, T. Garrison, D. R., & Archer, W. (2001). Assessing social presence in asynchronous, text-based computer conferencing. Journal of Distance Education, 14(3), 51-70. Retrieved from http://auspace.athabascau.ca:8080/dspace/bitstream/2149/732/1/Assessing%20Social%20Presence%20In%20Asynchronous%20Text-based%20Computer%20Conferencing.pdf
Shea, P., & Bidjerano, T. (2010). Towards a theory of self-efficacy, self-regulation, and development of a communities of inquiry in online and blended learning environments. Computers & Education, 55(4), 1721-1731. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360131510002095