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 structure and opportunities to interact and engage with each other.

So what is community of inquiry and why is it important? My understanding based on the readings in this module and the webinars, is that a community of inquiry is about creating a sense of belonging and support between participants. As research showed (see references), interaction and sense of community in online classes contributes to student success, where students feel safe to make contributions, support each other in achieving group goals. It also brings satisfaction to individual members.

If I think about myself, I've taken courses where I did it all online without any interaction with other participants. In one case, I've taken a course that I needed to teach - it was valuable, and I learnt a lot. But I was highly motivated because the course directly related to a course I was teaching. If I think of another instance, where I wanted to take a course that was interesting but did not have immediate implications, I dropped it. Having a group, a community, motivates, and creates a feeling of accountability.

So how to build and facilitate a community of inquiry? It is rather a broad concept, and I appreciated the conceptualisation of community of inquiry as cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence (see Fiock). To build a community, students need to be present cognitively. I guess there different ways to do that, and the approach suggested in many readings in this module was to have a injury-based or problem-based learning. In this approach, students identify a problem, then explore the problem/issue, then integrate/share possible solutions/explanations, then apply the knowledge. It seems that we often consider this as the most important part of learning, yet community of inquiry is also built on two other types of presence.

Social presence is also important. We are humans after all, with emotions and cultural backgrounds, and we relate to things in different ways. And social presence can be about expressing emotions, listening to each other, making effort to integrate ideas, etc. Interestingly, previous research pointed that students with high social presence learned more than those with low social presence (see Fiock). That's pretty interesting, isn't it.

Now teaching presence, from my understanding, relates to the leadership in the course. When an instructor does not have a completely laissez-faire attitude, but does take charge in designing a course that pays attention to community building, creating a safe environment where all opinions are welcome, directing the students when needed, providing opportunities for questions and comments, etc. And the teaching presence probably also relates to students having opportunities to teach (e.g., flipped classroom).

Beyond the course goals, creating a community of inquiry can have long-term consequences, with participants making life-long connections, networks, future collaborations. With online courses, this is enhanced, as those networks can be international.

So I've been thinking, in courses that I've participated, offline and online, what were the best practices that facilitated building communities of inquiry. My top factors are (1) having a knowledgeable and humble facilitator; (2) a structure that is clear and where it is possible to contribute easily; and (3) participants that feel comfortable and empowered to share views and raise questions (even when they are behind). What are yours?

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  References: 

  
  

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

  
  

  Fiock, H. S. (2020). Designing a community of inquiry in online courses. https://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/3985/5296