[D. Randy GarrisonKey Master]

Clarke, L. W., & Bartholomew, A. (2014). Digging beneath the surface: Analyzing the complexity of instructors’ participation in asynchronous discussion. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 18(3). Retrieved from: http://olj.onlinelearningconsortium.org/index.php/jaln/article/view/414/111

This is an important study as it takes us back to the genesis of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework. At that time, the exploration of online learning was precipitated by a preoccupation with social presence. This research brings into perspective the role of social presence and the need to balance social presence (SP) with teaching presence (TP) and cognitive presence (CP). Clarke and Bartholomew take a practical look at the role of the instructor in asynchronous discussions in order to better understand how this impacts student learning.

I will confine my reaction to the broad question related to understanding the instructor’s participation in the asynchronous discussions. To be clear, the authors had another goal – “to develop a user-friendly tool that can be used by other instructors to analyze their own participation in asynchronous discussions.” Notwithstanding the importance of the CoI coding tool, issues related to the coding tool is more theoretically challenging and, therefore, to avoid an unproductive distraction, this may be worth addressing in another response.

For our purposes here, we focus on four of the questions of the study:
• What is the instructor saying in these discussions?
• How do instructors interact differently in these discussions?
• How do the students perceive the instructor’s participation in these discussions?
• How do the instructors perceive their roles in these discussions?

The findings based on the coding of online transcripts found that the most common code was SP followed by TP and CP respectively. While this is of interest, caution must be exercised in interpreting frequency of responses and not necessarily the educative impact. As Akyol and Garrison (2008) found, frequencies of the presences will shift as a course develops. Of greater interest is how the students perceive the instructional postings. In this regard, the focus in this study was on the discrepancies among the instructors teaching essentially the same course and the student perceptions of how these participation patterns impacted their level of thinking. The results indicated that the instructors were not very good at directing the discussion and supporting CP. In essence the instructors’ bias was towards support and not challenging thinking.

The important message in this article is that TP does not end with facilitation. The results show that if the discourse is to move to issues of CP (practical inquiry), then TP must exhibit a balance between facilitation and more directive input or engagement (direct instruction). The conclusion is that instructor participation in online discussions is a balancing act. The authors state that the results further “the idea that we need all three parts of the COI framework to be effective but how we employ this framework takes a careful and thoughtful balancing act” (discussion, last sentence). In this regard, I would argue the results support the position that an effective CoI must keep the academic goals at the forefront. We must challenge and probe thinking through facilitation and direction (TP) while maintaining SP through encouragement.

In conclusion, if asynchronous online discussions are to be more than chat rooms, the nature of the instructional leadership is crucial – interaction is not enough (Garrison & Cleveland-Innes, 2005). Leadership (i.e., TP) in terms of achieving intended academic goals is crucial. The study of deep and meaningful learning suggests “that neither social presence alone nor the surface exchange of information can create the environment and climate for deep approaches to learning and meaningful educational exchanges” (Garrison & Cleveland-Innes, 2005, p. 144). This perspective is also supported by the research that shows SP to be important to create a climate for discourse but is essentially a mediating variable between TP and CP (Garrison, Cleveland-Innes & Fung, 2010; Shea & Bidjerano, 2009). The central message is the crucial role of TP if asynchronous discussions are to be more than a congenial chat room but, instead, an environment for collaborative inquiry that is directed toward intended academic goals.

References
Akyol, Z., & Garrison, D. R. (2008). The development of a community of inquiry over time in an online course: Understanding the progression and integration of social, cognitive and teaching presence. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 12(3), 3-22.
Garrison, D. R., & Cleveland-Innes, M. (2005). Facilitating cognitive presence in online learning: Interaction is not enough. American Journal of Distance Education, 19(3), 133-148.
Garrison, D. R., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Fung, T. S. (2010). Exploring causal relations among teaching, cognitive and social presence: A holistic view of the community of inquiry framework. Internet and Higher Education, 13(1-2), 31-36.
Shea, P. & Bidjerano, T. (2009). Cognitive presence and online learner engagement: A cluster analysis of the community of inquiry framework. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 21, 199-217.

[D. Randy GarrisonKey Master]

Kadir,
I would be the first to encourage revising and refining the CoI questionnaire
Cheers,
DRG

[D. Randy GarrisonKey Master]

I was very interested to see an accepted manuscript in the journal of The Internet & Higher Education and wanted to bring it to your attention. The article is:
Kozen, K., & Richardson J. C. (2014). New exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis insights into the Community of Inquiry survey. The Internet & Higher Education.
The reason for my excitement is that this research adds another level of credibility to Community of Inquiry (CoI) survey and framework. I have been asked about evidence for the CoI framework and there have been a number of exploratory factor analyses that have given credence to the CoI framework using the questionnaire based on the framework; however, the significance of this article is the statistical rigor and the reporting of a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).
With regard to the CFA, the study concludes that three factors fit the data and “… all items loaded very strongly on their corresponding presence factor” (p. 16). The authors also report that the CFA results align with the exploratory factor analysis results. Moreover, there is a detailed analysis and discussion of a couple of items that cross-loaded to some extent but did support their alignment as hypothesized.
The evidence of the CoI survey to reflect the factor structure of the CoI framework offers an important tool to study any number of issues associated with learning environments that have the goal of creating and sustaining purposeful learning communities. In particular, the authors draw attention to the design and development of forming communities of inquiry; that is, not just studying existing communities but using the CoI framework to create and sustain communities of inquiry. They also note the application of the CoI framework to “larger learning contexts than online discussions” (p. 22). This raises the issue of applying the CoI framework to face-to-face learning environments (not only online and blended contexts). The generic nature of the CoI framework has been noted in previous publications and would strongly support this application.
With this I invite your reactions to the implications of this research.
DRG

[D. Randy GarrisonKey Master]

Kadir,
Thank you for your post. You raise an interesting and complex issue.
The learning experience in a CoI is dynamic. That is, the emphasis in each presence changes over time as well as the relationships among the presences. I believe it would be more than worthwhile to map the changes among the presences over time and according to the nature of the learning tasks. I believe this is is the issue that you and Jennifer raised in your article?
I would add that I do not see the findings in your article as contradictions but instead reflecting particular circumstances in the learning experience. We have shown that SP does shift over time. I suspect it will also shift depending on the learning task as well.
Cheers,
DRG

[D. Randy GarrisonKey Master]

Joao,
There is so much to respond to here I am going to elicit some help.
Let me begin with a couple of theoretical comments. First, with regard to the first article, I am in full agreement re the inclusion of assessment as a fourth category for TP. This is in fact what we have done in our recent book that we discussed during the recent CIDER session. Indicators should be developed for this. Hopefully somebody will take this on.
Secondly, there has been no systematic updating of the coding template that I am aware of. Researchers have used a variety of approaches depending on there research topic. I generally do not have a problem with this. However, if it violates the basic premise of the framework, obviously there is a problem. With regard to the second article, this is where I have some reservations. While I think it raises some interesting issues, the problem is that it implicitly creates new presences (Teacher SP and Student SP) that violates the basic premise and assumptions of a community of inquiry. That is, TP is distributed among all the participants. Each of the participants take responsibility for teaching, social and cognition to the best of their abilities. So the question I have is with regard to the implications for the framework as a whole. This may apply to your second coding issue.
With regard to the first coding issue, I am going to defer to others such as Zehra. I have not done any coding for some time and would need to get up to speed. However, I will say that the key to me is to be clear and consistent whichever way you approach the coding. This applies to your second coding issue. I would code “complimenting and praising contributions” as SP regardless of who stated it. Again, whichever way you decide to go, just be consistent. With regard to the 3rd coding issue I will let Zehra respond. Finally, I would need to understand the 4th issue better to be helpful. My first question would be why not use the same template?
My apologies for deflecting some of your questions. Hopefully others can help in clarifying these issues.
Cheers,
R

[D. Randy GarrisonKey Master]

Joao,
First my apologies for not participating recently.
Zehra is a great source for addressing methodological issues.
I would also be happy to address any issues you or others may have.
Cheers,
Randy G

[D. Randy GarrisonKey Master]

I wanted to comment on Kadir Kozan and Jennifer Richardson’s article exploring the interrelationships between the elements of the CoI framework that has been accepted for publication in The Internet and Higher Education. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1096751613000511

This is a very interesting study that helps us think through the interdependence between and among social, cognitive and teaching presence. However, I would like to focus on one aspect of the findings related to social presence. For a number of years I have argued that “there is much to understand with regard to the construct itself [social presence] and its relationship to the other presences” (Garrison, 2011, p.35). Moreover, I suggested a slightly revised definition of social presence to reflect the development of social presence in a purposeful learning environment where identifying with the academic goal of the group has a much stronger influence on the cohesion and open communication than the socio-emotional categories of social presence (Garrison, 2009; Garrison, 2011).

In the Kozan and Richardson study that explored social presence with working professionals, they found that the “results do not align with the theoretical and empirical assumption that social presence is the mediating presence between teaching presence and cognitive presence.” The interpretation of this is interesting in that it appears to support my argument that the priority for participants in a formal course of study is with the academic purpose and goals. Consistent with this, the present study found a “large and positive partial correlation between cognitive presence and social presence” while controlling for teaching presence. That is, the academic activities (cognitive presence) appeared to be producing the social presence. For this group of working professionals, the authors argued that interpersonal interactions were established “primarily for learning purposes.” Personal relationships would result largely as a byproduct of the purposeful academic transaction and not simply for socio-emotional reasons.

The implication for me is that we should not be focusing too much on the socio-emotional or interpersonal relations at the outset of a course of studies. The social presence emphasis should be on cohesion (common purpose) and open communication (trusting environment); let the interpersonal relationships evolve naturally.

I welcome your thoughts.

DRG

 Garrison, D. R. (2009). Communities of inquiry in online learning. In P. L. Rogers, Berg, G. A., Boettcher, J. V., Howard, C., Justice, L., & Schenk, K. D. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of distance learning (2nd ed.) (pp. 352-355). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Garrison, D. R. (2011). E-Learning in the 21st century: A framework for research and practice (2nd ed.). London: Routledge/Taylor and Francis.

[D. Randy GarrisonKey Master]

Stephan,

Good question.

I will ask Marguerite, our site administrator, about this.

R

[D. Randy GarrisonKey Master]

Welcome to the beginning of what I hope will be a stimulating and worthwhile discourse associated with Community of Inquiry (CoI) research.

I thought I would start this discussion forum by soliciting posts with regard to the needs and interests, whether they be conceptual dilemmas or direct challenges, associated with the CoI theoretical framework.

Although refinements have been made to its elements, I believe the coherence of the framework itself has held up remarkably well since its beginning 15 years ago. Not withstanding this, however, there are issues and challenges that need to be addressed. There are also areas where participants simply wish to seek clarification. This raises the question how best do I get a quick overview of the CoI framework. While we are working on this, a comprehensive overview may be found in the second edition of E-Learing in the 21st Century.

From a research perspective, one of the core issues is whether we should add more elements to the framework. For example, it has been argued that a learning/learner or emotional presence should be included in the framework. My position has been that these can be accommodated within the existing presences or at the intersection of the presences. In terms of better defining and understanding the interdependence and overlap between the presences is our work on metacognition (Garrison & Akyol, 2013). Here we have focused on the intersection between Teaching and Cognitive Presence and defined metacognition as self and co-regulation to reflect purposeful learning in a collaborative environment.

In any case, I will not lead the selection of possible discussion topics further. I would like to hear from you what topics you would like to focus on. From there, hopefully, we can have a production discussion.

Garrison, D. R., & Akyol, Z. (2013). Toward the development of a metacognition construct for the community of inquiry framework. Internet and Higher Education, 17, 84-89.

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