I’ve come across Marti Cleveland-Innes’ ‘Community of Inquiry’ model before in thinking of how students connect with each other on learning platforms — particularly where I am trying to develop knowledge building communities (Scardamalia and Bereiter, 2006). These two weeks the topic was aligned to how online learning is effectively designed, and Cleveland-Innes delivered a very useful webinar on how that is achieved. Basically there are 7 principles:

I like the fact that open communication and trust is what she starts with — I think that these are two of the key factors for facilitating learning, it’s relational, or what is called “relational pedagogy” (Catherine Bovill, 2020). The sense of community is very important too, as well the the role of the educator (a few principles down), which is to bring collaboration to a resolution, and finally Biggs’ constructive alignment (1996) where assessment matches the ILOs. These principles sit in a model where 3 components relate to produce an online environment where the student is able to learn well:

Here I come across direct instruction (more recently its place in ‘productive failure’ by Manu Kapur) and how that needs to be tempered with affective presence. Interesting how affect, or the emotional connection with learning is gaining a strong presence in teaching and learning research.

In terms of how my PBL group worked on this topic, ‘Learning Designer’ was used as a tool (again suggested by Christian who is always brimming over with tech ideas, and is a bricoleur when it comes to his ability to fashion something relevant out of it) for us to design a hypothetical module where blended learning takes place, and we used for the context this ONL course. It’s that time of the year where time is scarce for me and so I was not as able to keep up with the topic as much as before, though I can see the potential of ‘Learning Designer’ (Loom was also used).

I got a lot out of the webinar — how Cleveland-Innes shares with students the learning design for example, as well as builds community via a survey, and finally how she chats about team work (we expect students to know how to do this naturally but they often do not). For the last part, finding out from students what worked well and what didn’t with teamwork already established some good ground rules. Building community is key — building a community that trusts each other is a challenge. It’s a challenge that I am keeping in mind as I look to the next semester of teaching.

References:

Biggs, J. Enhancing teaching through constructive alignment. High Educ 32, 347–364 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00138871

Boelens, R., De Wever, B., & Voet, M. (2017). Four key challenges to the design of blended learning: A systematic literature review. Educational Research Review, 22, 1-18.

Bovill, C. (2020) Co-creating learning and teaching: Towards relational pedagogy in higher education. St Albans: Critical Publishing.

Cleveland-Innes, M. (2020). Roles, learning design, and the Community of Inquiry. Introductory presentation for ONL202 where Marti describes CoI more in detail. Videotalk (35 min), Slides

Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (2006). Knowledge building: Theory, pedagogy, and technology. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (pp. 97-118). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. Edmonton: AU Press.