Topic 4 was about “Design for online and blended learning” and the scenario was very much relevant for the current situation with a pandemic going on, where everyone has more or less been “forced” to move their teaching online. With limited time to do so and no previous planning for this, it has many times resulted in that the lectures have been directly “translated” and moved online. This might have been successful but it is also very likely that it has resulted in a lack of interaction between the teacher´s and the students and also between the students themselves. In this topic we were introduced, with for me a new but very important framework, namely “Community of Inquiry (COI)”.

COI is building on this idea that a deep and meaningful (collaborative-constructivist) learning experience can be created through the development of three interdependent elements – social, cognitive and teaching presence.

The cognitive presence have been divided into four phases in a model called Practical  Inquiry Model (PIM) (Garrison & Arbaugh, 2007), starting with 1) an triggering event (identification of an issue), 2) exploration (exchange of ideas or information, 3) integration (connecting ideas) and finally ends with 4) resolution (final application of new ideas to other contexts) where the discussion has reached a high level of cognitive presence.

Social and cognitive presence in terms of interaction between learners have been shown to be of great importance to student success (Akyol & Garrison, 2008; Arbaugh, 2008; Richardson et al. 2017). However, this requires an establishment of a “community” space for students as mentioned in my earlier blog post for topic 3. Online anonymous group discussions have been suggested to be superior to face-to-face discussions when it comes to generate better collaborative results (Kim et al. 2011; Jong et al. 2013). Perhaps anonymous discussions removes some barriers and creates such a community space, as Palloff and Pratt (1999) explained, where the students are less vulnerable and dare to be honest and openly discuss without the feeling of being judged.

When it comes to teacher presence, it has been reported of that modest instructor feedback/activity and the timing of such is one of the most effective strategies to support social and cognitive presence (An et al., 2009; Arend, 2009; Dennen, 2005). For example, it was seen that students expressed their thoughts and opinions more freely, when the instructor intervention was minimal (An et al., 2009).

In our group we were curious on the student´s perspective on how they have experienced online teaching, the meaning and motivation for it, what engages them and how they felt about the having the webcam on or off. In total, we managed to get 61 students in total with representatives from all of our institutions and with different number of months of experience from online learning.

Going through the answers, I can conclude that the following practises was among the main factors stated when it comes to what practises that hindered them to create meaning, become motivated and engaged:

• Lack of engagement from the teacher to make effort to interact with the students
• No connection to real life or using examples they could not relate to due to age, environment, background
• No time for reflection
• No group consistency i.e. the members of the group for group assignments changed too often for the students to have enough time to really connect and build trust

In addition most students agreed upon that keeping the web cam on helped them to feel more socially connected to their peers and teacher´s.

We cannot draw too many conclusions from the survey since it was conducted very fast and without proper time and approaches to analyse the answer´s. However, it was still evident that the factors mentioned above very well highlights the importance of constructivism, which is a theory of learning where the learners rather than simply receiving information seeks meaning from various channels and discussion with others. In other words, teaching is not a one-man show!

Literature:

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(3-4), 3-22.

An, H., Shin, S., & Lim, K. (2009). The effects of different instructor facilitation approaches on students’ interactions during asynchronous online discussions. Computers & Education, 53(3), 749-760. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2009.04.015

Arbaugh, J. B. (2008). Does the community of inquiry framework predict outcomes in online MBA courses? The International Review of Research in Open and DistanceLearning,9(2) Retrieved September 9, 2008 from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/490/1045

Arend, B. (2009). Encouraging critical thinking in online threaded discussions. The Journal of Educators Online, 6(1). Retrieved from http://www.thejeo.com/Archives/Volume6Number1/Arendpaper.pdf

Dennen, V. P. (2005). From message posting to learning dialogues: Factors affecting learner participation in asynchronous discussion. Distance Education, 26(1), 127-148. doi:10.1080/01587910500081376.

Garrison, D. R., & Arbaugh, J. B. (2007). Researching the community of inquiry framework: Review, issues, and future directions. The Internet and Higher Education, 10(3), 157-172. doi: 10.1016/j.iheduc.2007.04.001

Kim,  P.,  Hong,  J.,  Bonk,  C.,  &  Lim,  G.  (2011).  Effects  of  group  reflection  variations  in  project-based  learning  integrated  in  a  Web  2.0  learning  space.  Interactive Learning Environments, 19(4), 333-349.

Jong,  B.,  Lai,  C.,  Hsia,  Y.,  &  Lin,  T.  (2013).  Effects  of  anonymity in group discussion on peer interaction and learning achievement. IEEE Transactions on Education, 56(3), 292-299.

Richardson, J,. Maeda, Y,. Lv, J & Caskurlu, S (2017) Social presence in relation to students satisfaction and learning in the online environment: A meta-analysis. Computers in human behavior, vol:71, s:402-417

Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (1999). Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.