The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework (Garrison, Anderson and Archer, 2000) identifies three elements as critical to an online educational experience: cognitive presence, social presence and teaching presence.
Fig. 1: The Community of Inquiry framework (adapted from Garrison, Anderson and Archer, 2000)
Cognitive presence
Cognitive presence is ‘the extent to which learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse’ (Garrison, Anderson and Archer, 2000: 89). It manifests itself in online courses in students’ ‘sense of puzzlement’ at a ‘triggering event’; in ‘information exchange’ as students explore content; and in students connecting and applying ideas as they work through the processes of ‘integration’ and ‘resolution’ (Garrison, Anderson and Archer, 2000: 89).
Social presence
Social presence is ‘the ability of participants to identify with the community (e.g. course of study), communicate purposefully in a trusting environment, and develop interpersonal relationships by way of projecting their individual personalities’ (Garrison, Anderson and Archer, 2000: 89). It can be seen in students’ emotional expression, open communication and group cohesion.
Teaching presence
Teaching presence is ‘The design, facilitation, and direction of cognitive and social processes’ to achieve learning outcomes (Garrison, Anderson and Archer, 2000: 89-90), and can be the responsibility of students as well as instructors. It includes instructional management, such as defining and initiating discussion topics; building understanding; and direct instruction, such as focusing students’ attention.
These elements combine to shape three core aspects of the educational experience, as shown in Fig. 1: supporting discourse, selecting content and setting climate.
Karen Swan (2004) has mapped each element of the CoI framework to a different form of online interaction, as shown in Fig. 2. Though the CoI was originally designed for asynchronous, text-based online learning environments, it can be applied to blended asynchronous and synchronous environments that incorporate a variety of tools and activities. The following section shows how these tools and activities and learning design can promote each kind of interaction: Student-content, student-student and student-teacher.
Fig. 2: The relationship between interaction and presence in an online learning environment (adapted from Swan, 2004)
Student-content interaction
Structure
To make your course content meaningful and engaging to students, and to help students interact with it, structure it so you provide a clear route of progression for students to follow. You can start to do this by editing the course menu, as shown in Fig. 3:
Fig. 3: Examples of a simple menu, where content is grouped by week, and a themed menu, where content is grouped by theme and subject
Creating varied content
Once you have decided on a structure, create your course content. Provide a variety of media and activities to stimulate students and ensure they are actively engaged. Use a combination of:
- text-based content
- attachments (PDFs, PowerPoints)
- links to external content (journals, websites)
- videos (either self-made or on YouTube)
- webinar recordings
- instructor-led content (PowerPoint supported with audio/video)
Structure your content into clear sections and digestible chunks so students can easily access and follow it.
Supplementary resources
Supplement your own materials with Open Educational Resources (OERs): freely accessible, openly-licensed text, media and other digital assets that are useful for teaching, learning and assessment. Popular OER repositories include:
- OER Commons
- MIT OpenCourseware
- MERLOT
If you use OERs, source materials that are accurate, relevant and free to use. Check licensing permissions using Creative Commons, and remember to reference and give attribution to content that is not your own.
Tools and activities
Design activities using a variety of tools to help students interact and engage with your learning content:
- set a quiz or assignment, formative or summative, for students to test their knowledge and understanding of content
- use a survey or poll to gauge students’ opinions on a topic or learning material
- attach a video or reading at the top of a discussion forum and set a task to focus students, help them gain a deeper understanding of the content through peer learning, and enable them to display their understanding
- set a task for students to complete using a wiki, to facilitate information exchange, sharing and collaboration.
Reflection
It is important that you give students space to reflect on their learning. You are an integral part of encouraging them to engage in reflection. To do this you could:
- create a learning journal, private or shared with you, for students to collect useful learning content or measure and record their personal growth and development
- set up a blog, informal or grade-bearing, for students to share weekly reflections on topics they have studied.
Student-student interaction
Community building
Help students to get to know each other at the start of the course and build an online community. To do this you could:
- ask students to create a profile and read each other’s profiles on Blackboard
- set up an informal forum discussion where students share something about themselves with rest of the group
- dedicate part of the first live lecture or tutorial to an informal synchronous discussion where students form breakout groups to share personal information.
Peer learning and collaboration
Create opportunities for peer learning and collaboration. To do this you could:
- use asynchronous discussion forums and synchronous discussions, including group activities, to help students gain a deeper understanding of course content through peer learning
- use a variety of discussion tasks, including case studies, role plays and debates, to facilitate peer learning
- provide a variety of tools to help students brainstorm and share ideas, e.g., Mentimeter, Padlet or a whiteboard
- set tasks for students to complete using a wiki or shared online document to facilitate information exchange and collaboration
- design group assignments that assess students on both individual contributions and group collaboration
- facilitate peer review of individual and group assignments.
Student-teacher interaction
Maintaining contact
It is important to maintain regular contact with your students. The most effective way to do this is through course announcements in Blackboard. Use announcements to:
- inform students of new content that you have uploaded to the course
- tell students what they should be doing in the course during the week and set goals, perhaps through Monday morning announcements to introduce the activities for the week ahead
- send summaries to reflect on what the course has covered during the week and how this leads into the following week’s content
- develop student motivation by explaining how the week’s tasks are linked, and what the ILOs are for each task, giving students a reason to engage with your content and with you.
If you use announcements, don’t limit them to text; you can attach files, insert images and embed video too. If you select the option to send your announcement as an email, students not only see it in the course but also receive it via their PolyU email account. Finally, add a course link to the announcement so students can navigate directly to the content that you select, reducing cognitive load.
Use email within Blackboard to target roles, groups or individuals. For example, you might want to congratulate somestudents on their hard work or communicate with others who may need extra motivation or encouragement.
If you use email, remember it will be sent from your PolyU email address. Blackboard will not keep copies of any email that you send. If you are writing to the whole class, it is better to use an announcement, as these are stored on the course.
Providing support
Create a discussion forum in which students can ask general questions about your course. These questions can cover technical issues, important dates and deadlines for assessment, resources you have shared or any aspects of the course that students are finding difficult.
Giving feedback on student learning
Give students prompt and meaningful feedback on their learning. In addition to feedback on assignments, you could:
- build automated feedback into quizzes in Blackboard
- use the comment feature in a wiki, Padlet or shared document to give feedback on individual contributions in group tasks.
Collecting feedback on the student learning experience
Collect student feedback on their learning experience:
- create surveys in Blackboard or use Microsoft Forms to gather student feedback on the week’s content
- create polls at the end of live lectures or tutorials for students to give feedback on different learning activities and share how far they achieved the learning aims of the session
- ask students to write about their learning experience in a forum discussion, blog or learning journal.
References and further reading and viewing
CoI, online interactions and blended online learning
Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. Internet and Higher Education, 11(2), 1-14.
Garrison, D. R. & Cleveland-Innes, M. (2005). Facilitating Cognitive Presence in Online Learning: Interaction Is Not Enough. The American Journal of Distance Education, 19(3), 133-148.
Kyei-Blankson, L., Ntuli, E., & Donnelly, H. (2019). Establishing the importance of interaction and presence to student learning in online environments. Journal of Interactive Learning Research, 30(4), 539-560.
Swan, K. (2004). Relationships between interactions and learning in online environments. The Sloan Consortium, 1-6.
Szeto, E. (2015). Community of Inquiry as an instructional approach: What effects of teaching, social and cognitive presences are there in blended synchronous learning and teaching? Computers & Education, 81, 191-201.
Online video tutorials from EDC to learn more about the different tools within Blackboard
https://www.polyu.edu.hk/elearning/teacher-support/bbseries/
Online help resources for synchronous online learning platforms
- Blackboard Collaborate Ultra: https://help.blackboard.com/Collaborate/Ultra/Moderator
- Microsoft Teams: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/teams
- Zoom: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us
Third-party tools to engage students during your synchronous lecture or tutorial
- Kahoot: https://kahoot.com/
- Mentimeter: https://www.mentimeter.com/
- Padlet: https://padlet.com/
- Socrative: https://socrative.com/higher-ed/
Third-party tools to engage students during your synchronous lecture or tutorial
- Using and Facilitating Online Discussion Boards
- Guidelines for Teachers on Creating Short Teaching Videos Using uRewind and PowerPoint
- Practice Guidelines for Teachers: Preparing and Conducting a Synchronous Session
- Blackboard Collaborate Ultra vs. Microsoft Teams vs. Zoom: Comparison Chart
- Live Lectures: Getting Students to Come, Keeping Them Engaged
- Ten Activities for Engaging Live Online Teaching
- Enriching the Learning Experience of Your Course with OER
