Covid has made more pupils and students working online and the presence among students that usually not attend every lesson has increased due to this fact. Still, many students express feelings of loneliness and a too big responsibility to drive your learning “by your self”. I do believe that we can better prepare our courses and support our students in online learning, wheteher it depends on Covid or are planed distance courses. In the following, I will explore the framework of Community of Incuiry (CoI) as a continuation of my elaboration about Learning Communities and Personal Learning Network in my latest blog. I will then move on to blended learning as a concept and how to design for blended and online effective, successful and happy learning. The happy-word is borrowed from Salmon (2013) and I really want to emphasize it as it is rather unusual to see such words in combination with successful and/or effective.

Community of Inquiry (CoI)

Let me start with a quote or two. “An educational community of inquiry is a group of individuals who collaboratively engage in purposeful critical discourse and reflection to construct personal meaning and confirm mutual understanding.” (Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 2000).  According to Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes & Garrison (2013) “The premise of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework is that higher education is both a collaborative and an individually constructivist learning experience”. According to Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes & Garrison (2013) “The premise of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework is that higher education is both a collaborative and an individually constructivist learning experience”.

Three key elements or “crucial prerequisites for a successful higher educational experience” (Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 2000), captured by the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework are social, cognitive, and teaching presence. As Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes & Garrison (2013) express, social presence embraces aspects such as trust, fellowship, communication, while cognitive presence can be described as where participants create meaning and interpret the content through reflection and conversations. Finally, but actually the prerequisite for the other two is teaching presence, which is connected to the design and teachers facilitating, supporting and fostering the educational event. As the picture from Garrison, Anderson & Archer (2000) below shows, students’ engagement with other participants, with the content and with the goal/direction are surrounded by these three dimensions of presence. In addition, the design (of structure and tools etc), the context, the standards keep the different aspects together, framing them. In the intersections, discourse is supported, wanted climate are set and in a way, learning is regulated.

Illustration of Community of Inquiry (Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 2000). On this site you will also find some useful tips on how to develop teacher, social and cognitive presence.

Cleveland-Innes and Campbell (2012) have explored emotions in online learning environments and they argue that emotional presence should be part of the fundamental aspects of online CoI. They have re-considered the above model by Garrison et al. as they emphasize that not acknowledging the role of emotions in learning when working with developing and reframing education would a mistake as emotions are central in human experience.

Cleveland-Innes (2020) is also emphasizing engagement. In her ONL presentation she discusses what engagement might be. She points out that “Learner engagement is a measure that reflects the quantity and quality of a learner’s participation in their courses and every other aspect of their educational program. Also, it echoes a learner’s interaction and cooperation with co-learners and instructors. In other words, learner engagement is the measure of a potentially successful learning experience for everyone concerned.”. She suggests a link for reading more about learner engagement which I found interesting and inspiring.

As I see it, the model for successful learning in communities of inquiry (CoI), discussed above, can be connected to the four main characteristics of learning communities online pointed out by West & Williams (2018): access, relationships, values and function, which I write about in my earlier blog. In addition, Salmon (2013) present a five-stage model for successful online learning that coincides with the framework of CoI, and central aspects of learning communities.

Five-stage-model by Salmon (2013).

Design for blended learning

Before diving in to design I would like to say something about blended learning. The teacher education programs that I am working with as an educational leader and teacher successively have converted into distance education with a few face-to-face meetings at campus and the rest as online activities, synchronous and asynchronous. We have made these changes in order to attract students from the region and whole country, as well as for the purpose of creating a more flexible education in terms of how and when to study. As such, our programs are built upon the idea of blended learning although I believe we can further develop that idea as much of the design has been directly translated from our campus education programs. Vaughan et al. (2013) discuss design for blended learning built upon the framework of CoI by Garrison et al. They describe that blended learning is about mixing face-to-face activities with online learning activities, pointing out that “The strength of integrating face-to-face synchronous communication and text-based online asynchronous communication is powerfully complementary for higher educational purposes. The goal of blended learning is to bring these together to academically challenge students in ways not possible through either mode individually”.  For me, blended also indicates the integration between face-to-face activities online in real time and activities performed in group or individually beyond a specific time, maybe though constrained to a specific digital tool or online collaboration environment. The balance between synchronous and asynchronous activities, as well as finding tools for collaboration both ways are challenges when thinking about the aspects of access, relationships, vision and function as well as the model of CoI, but still there are great potentials. Vaughan et al. (2013) point out we need to break the barriers of time and space, and argue that “blended learning is specifically directed to enhancing engagement through the innovative adoption of purposeful online learning activities”. They suggest seven principles for designing blended learning in higher ed. which can easily be combined with the above emphasized aspects and characteristics for CoI.

1. Plan for the creation of open communication and trust.
2. Plan for critical reflection and discourse.
3. Establish community and cohesion.
4. Establish inquiry dynamics (purposeful inquiry).
5. Sustain respect and responsibility.
6. Sustain inquiry that moves to resolution.
7. Ensure assessment is congruent with intended processes and outcomes.

As I am not that fond of stages or principles, I will have to rethink all this information and knowledge and make my own illustration of design for appreciative, blended, collaborative, d…?,  engaged, functional learning – it might end up in a whole alphabet for learning-design – who knows?

Still, all these principles, models, implications and advices concluded above need to be taken care of. Educational developers might be on group to adress but teachers, who are the ones meeting the students, become especially important as design isn’t just about course frameworks, goals, structures and assessments but about aspects that need to live during the whole course. Bates (2019) points out that teachers are crucial when designing for online collaborative learning and CoI. He states: “The role of the teacher or instructor in this process is seen as critical, not only in facilitating the process and providing appropriate resources and learner activities that encourage this kind of learning, but also, as a representative of a knowledge community or subject domain, in ensuring that the core concepts, practices, standards and principles of the subject domain are fully integrated into the learning cycle.”.  

In the following I will elaborate upon design of blended learning in relation to some of the aspects of Learning Communities (West & Williams, 2018), CoI (Garisson et al., 2000), Five-stage-model (Salmon, 2013) and the principles suggested by Vaughan et al. (2013) above.

Let me start with Access, an aspect that I think are missing in the principles above by Vaughan et al. (2013), still overlapping with Relationships, Engagement with Participants and Social and Emotional Presence as well as with Vision, Function and Engagement with Goals/direction and Content.

Turner (2020) points out that “Entering a classroom on the first day without knowing anyone can be intimidating. Entering a Zoom room in the same context can feel isolating.” (p.2). So, how can I as a teacher facilitate students’ access when it comes to clarity in technology, tasks and course design, as well as a feeling of security and comfortable atmosphere where you like to collaborate and contribute? I have learnt that is important to:

• Make sure that students are properly introduced and have the chance to try technology used within the course – i e access to the meeting room and tools for collaborating there.
• Nurture the establishment of learners’ relationships with each other and with you as a teacher, and build a sense of community. Create a feeling of inclusion, belonging and security among the students. Being personal but not private as a teacher building social and emotional relationships with the students yourself, as well as helping students to get to know each other is a key factor for access to the group and the interaction within the group (c.f. Brindley, Blaschke & Walti, 2009). In a study about student engagement, conducted by me and a colleague, the result showed that teacher students emphasized participation in terms of feeling safe and secure, and that they found it important to get to know people that they were supposed to interact with (Bergmark & Westman, 2018). Focus the student-teacher relationship supporting students’ social connections by for example “offering warm messages of encouragement and interacting with students through online check-ins, videoconferencing, or telephone calls” (Fanshawe, Burke, Tualaulelei & Cameron, 2020). Brindley et al. (2009) also argue, with reference to Chapman, Ramondt, & Smiley (2005) that “Important elements for establishing successful learning communities are informality, familiarity, honesty, openness, heart, passion, dialogue, rapport, empathy, trust, authenticity, disclosure, humour, and diverse opinions”.  
• Make sure that students get to know and understand views on learning as well as the values and the meaning of a learning community or CoI in order to better know what is expected. “By clarifying our understanding and expectations about what we hope students will be able to do, learn, and become in a learning community, we can more precisely identify what our ideal learning community would be like and distinguish this ideal from the less effective/efficient communities existing in everyday life and learning” (West & Williams, 2018). Transparency of expectations is also emphasized by Brindley et al. (2009).
• Interaction, dialogue and engagement are vital for online learning environments and thus require teachers with skills to facilitate and support access to such activities/milieus (Brindley et al. 2009). So, give access to interactive and collaborative strategies and skills such as community agreements; different structures for conversations, and facilitate learner’s readiness for group work, so that everyone is invited to share and participate, protocol for sharings, sharing responsibility for documentation and so on.
• Plan for continuous tutorials, questions times etc. to be able to guide students and help them access different dimensions of collaboration and learning communities.

The list can be so much longer but this is my start, I will continue (more about that in my last blog). I let a picture of a tea bag that I got from my students talk instead. We had just sat down for a seminar and one student that had bought a cup of tea said: Oh Susanne you should have had this tea-bag, it suits you. The student showed it to the one sitting next to her and then they laughed and the other said “It does not only suits you – it defines you!” I was flattered and glad that they had pinpointed my ambition and my values and also seemed to appreciate it.

Finally, as teachers and educational leaders need to be able to see traces or indicators of wanted/expected result, I found the table below from Garrison et al (2000) quite useful as it shows some examples of indicators to guide you when designing or evaluating the design. Brindley et al. stress that assessing has been a common way of demonstrating the value of learning in communities. I think it is important to start use other ways to show the value we ascribe learning communities. If you are interested in more indicators you can find a table/chart as an appendix in Guide for blended learning by Cleveland-Innes & Wilton (2018) that you may find useful. In addition, there are a lot of useful stuff in this book.

Table by Cleveland-Innes & Wilton (2018) in Guide for blended learning available here.

On this link you can find an Erasmus+ project called ABC learning design that provides you with a toolkit and ideas of how to arrange workshops among higher ed. teachers for developing and designing courses collaboratively taking different learning styles in consideration. The main idea is creating “storyboards”. 

On this site EDUCAUSE Review, you will find some interesting links to different subjects concerning online learning and collaboration under the headline Transforming Higher Ed., for example about creating emotional engagement, student success in a changing world, pedagogy of care in communities of practices.

Thank you for reading and Good Luck with your design! / Susanne

References:

ABC-learning. Erasmus+ [Homepage] Available at: https://abc-ld.org/

Bates, T. (2019). Online collaborative learning. In Teaching in a Digital Age: Guidelines for Teaching and Learning. (2^nd edition). (chapter 4) https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/

Bergmark, U. & Westman, S. (2018). Student participation within teacher education: emphasising democratic values, engagement and learning for a future profession, Higher Education Research & Development, DOI: 10.1080/07294360.2018.1484708

Brindley, J., Blaschke, L. M. & Walti, C. (2009). Creating effective collaborative learning groups in an online environment. The international Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 10(3). Available at: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/675/1271

Cleveland-Innes, M. (2020). Roles, learning design, and the Community of Inquiry. Presentaton ONL.

Cleveland-Innes, M. & Campbell, P. (2012). Emotional Presence, Learning, and the Online Learning Environment. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 13(4). Available at: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1234/2347

Cleveland-Innes, M. & Wilton, D. (2018). Guide to blended learning. Coomonwealth of learning. Available at: http://oasis.col.org/bitstream/handle/11599/3095/2018_Cleveland-Innes-Wilton_Guide-to-Blended-Learning.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Fanshawe, Burke, Tualaulelei & Cameron (2020). Creating emotional engagement in online learning. Blog at Transforming Higher Ed. Available at: https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2020/8/creating-emotional-engagement-in-online-learning

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferenceing in higher education model. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3), 87-105. Available at: http://cde.athabascau.ca/coi_site/documents/Garrison_Anderson_Archer_Critical_Inquiry_model.pdf

Salmon, G. (2013). The Five Stage Model. [Homepage]. Available at: https://www.gillysalmon.com/five-stage-model.html

EDUCAUSE Review. Transforming Higher Ed. [Homepage]. Available at: https://er.educause.edu/columns/transforming-higher-ed

Turner, K. H. (2020) “Building Community in a Virtual Course,” Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education: 9(1), 16. Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/wte/vol9/iss1/16

Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes & Garrison (2013) Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. Edmonton: AU Press. Available at: Click to access 120229_99Z_Vaughan_et_al_2013-Teaching_in_Blended_Learning_Environments.pdf

West, R. E. & Williams, G. (2018). I don’t think that word means what you think it means: A proposed framework for defining learning communities. Educational Technology Research and Development. Available online at https://edtechbooks.org/lidtfoundations/learning_communities