Questions of design: community of inquiry
So many things to focus on when it comes to designing an online course! I have seen an approach in the beginning of the pandemic, of putting an offline course online, without any consideration of the nature of the internet, and remote learning. In my university, we've learnt so much about the peculiarities of online environment, yet it seems we still think of the Internet as a back-up option: If face-to-face is not possible, then we adapt the offline content to online platforms. With this approach, I am afraid that we are missing the opportunities provided by the Internet and the various platforms. But I would like here to discuss one aspect of online courses - facilitating community of inquiry. And I think this is the aspect that does need special attention. When we have classes face-to-face, communities often form naturally (although here we also can develop our approaches more than we usually do). But offline, facilitating a community of inquiry requires a certain struc...