When talking about online learning, there is a lot of discussion about the Community of Inquiry framework as a structure for a successful course. This focuses on teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence, with emotional presence introduced as a parallel or fourth presence. The use and embrace of emotions is of course really important in our lives, and the social presence can also help in learning, but what does this mean in practice?

How can this seemingly abstract framework be useful in technical subjects and how could it be used by non social scientists? My scientific mind finds looking at the two parts of the name more useful. The first is community-based learning, learning in connection and engagement with others. The second is inquiry-based learning, learning through asking questions. I think this is somewhat easier to work with.

Technical topics are somewhat “dry” and social and emotional presence is very limited in comparison with non technical ones. Students do not really enjoy group work, and group work cannot always be structured in a way to promote collaboration. When a course discusses the well established laws of nature there is not so much space for debate or the expression of one’s own ideas, unless the topic of discussion deviates from the main focus of the course. Mathematics is a prime example. There is a single answer to a question how much is 1+1. However that does not mean that no engagement whatsoever is possible in a group. Discussion topics on the overlap between social and technical sciences, such as philosophy, ethics, or some historical developments in the field can be very interesting. An inclusion of these in the technical courses can offer more possibilities for engagement. It also provides a more well-rounded education, which should be one of the aims of an educational programme.

A flipped classroom approach can also help discussion. In engineering, the aim is to solve a problem. And more often than not there are different possible solutions, depending on which are the main criteria. The design of a car will look very different depending on whether the main aim of the design is comfort, speed, low fuel consumption, appearance. This offers prime ground for discussion and can be used in group work or in a case study. Understanding that there may be more than a single optimal solution depending on what is the relative importance of different factors that can affect a design is a concept that engineering students should comprehend during their studies.

We can probably not get to the same point of social presence and engagement in a technical course compared to a non-technical one. But that should not be the end goal. The end goal should be to take advantage of the extra layers of learning that are possible through collaboration, engagement, and inquiry. And that is where the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields can learn from and embrace the arts and social sciences. After all, even the most abstract mathematical and physical problems have solutions that are elegant and simple.