Students’ extensive use of Facebook in their daily lives has led researchers to investigate the a... more Students’ extensive use of Facebook in their daily lives has led researchers to investigate the affordances of Facebook for educational purposes. To further the research into the use of Facebook to improve language teaching, we conducted a convergent parallel mixed-methods study to examine the use of Community of Inquiry-informed Facebook discussion activities on the speaking performances of undergraduate students in a blended EFL speaking class in Bangladesh. A Facebook group was maintained for both the treatment and control conditions; however, the discussion activities were required only by the treatment condition. We found a statistically significant difference between the initial and post-test speaking scores for the treatment and control conditions. While no difference was observed in post-test scores between the two conditions, students’ and the instructor’s comments on the Facebook group and student interview data revealed that Facebook was helpful for both conditions in imp...
The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2017
This case study examined a team of instructors’ use of social presence, teaching presence, and at... more This case study examined a team of instructors’ use of social presence, teaching presence, and attitudinal dissonance in a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) on Animal Behaviour and Welfare (ABW), designed to facilitate attitudinal learning. The study reviewed a team of six instructors’ use of social presence and teaching presence by applying the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, as well as the establishment of attitudinal dissonance within the announcements and discussion forums. The instructors entered the MOOC as a collaborative facilitation team and created a highly balanced manner of communication and positive atmosphere within the course. The instructional design focused on creating an informative and knowledgeable network of global learners that would agree that animal welfare was a critical social issue in today’s society. These course goals and facilitation intentions were demonstrated through a high number of social and teaching presence indicators, with a significant u...
The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2016
This study examines a MOOC instructor’s use of social presence, teaching presence, and dissonance... more This study examines a MOOC instructor’s use of social presence, teaching presence, and dissonance for attitudinal change in a MOOC on Human Trafficking, designed to promote attitudinal change. Researchers explored the MOOC instructor’s use of social presence and teaching presence, using the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework as a lens, and examined the facilitation of attitudinal dissonance within the discussion forum, announcements and blog postings in the course. The instructor entered the MOOC with the idea of serving as a co-participant and a facilitation choice was made to address the issue of multiple perspectives and experiences. The instructional design focused on establishing a collaborative community of learners and this was demonstrated through a high number of social presence indicators but with significant use of all three areas in evidence. Findings present a detailed examination of instructor strategies in a MOOC designed to focus on the establishment of a collabora...
Proceedings from eLSE: The 5 th International …, 2009
Abstract: This paper examines how the efficacy of new online learning technologies can be assesse... more Abstract: This paper examines how the efficacy of new online learning technologies can be assessed with indicators of the Community of Inquiry Framework (CoI). The CoI framework has attracted considerable interest and has been used extensively to study and design online ...
This study investigates the impact of peer feedback used as an instructional strategy to increase... more This study investigates the impact of peer feedback used as an instructional strategy to increase the quality of students' online postings. While peer feedback has been demonstrated to support students' learning in traditional classrooms, little is known about its efficacy in online discussions. To address this gap, we examined students' perceptions of the value of giving and receiving peer feedback, specifically related to the quality of discussion postings in an online course. In addition, we investigated the impact of that ...
Interaction is an essential element of online learning and researchers had use Social Learning An... more Interaction is an essential element of online learning and researchers had use Social Learning Analytics (SLA) to understand the characteristics of meaningful interaction. While the potential for network analysis in education (i.e., SLA) is valuable, limited research has considered how best to use this emerging field to inform meaningful interaction in online settings. Online learning researchers need a concise and simplified framework for SLA to support interaction in online learning environments. Therefore, we present a conceptual framework to make SLA accessible for researchers investigating learners' interactions in online learning. The framework includes concepts from network theory and the online learning literature integrated into a new perspective to analyze learners' online behaviors and interactions. We analyzed existing models and frameworks to show how network analysis has been used in online learning resulting in a conceptual environment to investigate learner i...
Utilizando tres constructos interdependientes, la presencia social, cognitiva y docente, el marco... more Utilizando tres constructos interdependientes, la presencia social, cognitiva y docente, el marco de la Comunidad de Indagación es un modelo teórico de proceso del aprendizaje en línea. En específico, la presencia docente se divide en tres subelementos —a) facilitación del discurso, b) instrucción directa y c) diseño y organización instruccional— que trabajan en conjunto para crear un ambiente colaborativo-constructivista para el aprendizaje. Se analizaron datos de la encuesta de la Comunidad de Indagación de 160 estudiantes en 11 grupos mediante un análisis de varianza (ANOVA) unidireccional para determinar si existían diferencias estadísticamente significativas entre los puntajes de la presencia docente entre grupos de dos cursos en línea con un diseño de curso idéntico impartidos por profesores diferentes. Los resultados mostraron diferencias significativas entre los puntajes de la presencia docente de profesores individuales en ambos cursos. En específico, se encontraron diferen...
The ten research articles in this year’s issue showcased research devoted to advancing high-quali... more The ten research articles in this year’s issue showcased research devoted to advancing high-quality online learning around four themes: learner engagement, the use synchronous video-based communication to support teaching, instructors’ perspectives and experiences, and pedagogical recommendations.
The American Educational Research Association (AERA) is a research society that “strives to advan... more The American Educational Research Association (AERA) is a research society that “strives to advance knowledge about education, to encourage scholarly inquiry related to education, and to promote the use of research to improve education and serve the public good” (2022). The association aims to encourage educational research studies and promote the practical implications of research findings. With 12 divisions and more than 150 special interest groups (SIGs), AERA provides advanced information to generate connections across practitioners, the field’s leading researchers, and policymakers. AERA includes more than 25,000 members from 85 countries, including faculty, researchers, evaluators, graduate students, university deans, research directors, and higher education administrators.In 2022, the AERA annual meeting was both place-based in San Diego, California, and virtual, with the theme of “Cultivating Equitable Education Systems for the 21st Century”. As an influential special intere...
The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning
Using three interdependent constructs: social, cognitive, and teaching presence, the Community of... more Using three interdependent constructs: social, cognitive, and teaching presence, the Community of Inquiry framework is a theoretical process model of online learning. Specifically, teaching presence contains three sub-elements—(a) facilitation of discourse, (b) direct instruction, and (c) instructional design and organization—that work together to create a collaborative-constructivist learning environment. Data from the Community of Inquiry survey from 160 learners in 11 course sections were analyzed using a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to determine whether statistically significant differences existed in teaching presence scores between sections of two online courses with identical course design taught by different instructors. Results showed significant differences between individual instructors’ teaching presence scores for each of the two courses. Specifically, significant differences were found in each sub-element of teaching presence except for one course’s instruction...
This multiple case study explores how instructors conceptualize and employ scaffolding in online ... more This multiple case study explores how instructors conceptualize and employ scaffolding in online courses. Participants included full time faculty (n = 4) who have designed and taught at least one online course within the past 12 months. Data sources included pre-interview surveys, semi-structured interviews, and online course observations. Data were analyzed by employing a general analytical strategy for developing a case description (Yin, 2018). The results showed that (a) instructors define scaffolding as a support to help students achieve course outcomes and (b) instructors implement different types of scaffolding (i.e., conceptual, metacognitive, procedural, strategic, and motivational) in hard and soft scaffolding forms. The results also showed that instructors' conceptualization and implementation of scaffolding differed based on their discipline and teaching philosophy, and the unique features of online courses. Implications for practice and research are discussed.
Social presence theory was the term fi rst proposed in 1976 to explain how telecommunications inf... more Social presence theory was the term fi rst proposed in 1976 to explain how telecommunications infl uence how people communicate (Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976). Short and colleagues (1976) defi ned social presence as the degree of salience (i.e., quality or state of being there) between two communicators using a communication medium. This theory became particularly important for online educators trying to understand how people communicated in primarily text-based online courses during the 1990s (Lowenthal, 2009). In fact, social presence was identifi ed as one of the core elements of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, a widely used guide for planning, developing, evaluating, and researching online learning (Boston et al., 2009; Garrison & Arbaugh, 2007; Kumar, Dawson, Black, Cavanaugh, & Sessums, 2011; Kumar & Ritzhaupt, 2014; Swan, Day, Bogle, & Matthews, 2014). The CoI framework is a dynamic process model of online learning based on the theory that effective learning re...
Students’ extensive use of Facebook in their daily lives has led researchers to investigate the a... more Students’ extensive use of Facebook in their daily lives has led researchers to investigate the affordances of Facebook for educational purposes. To further the research into the use of Facebook to improve language teaching, we conducted a convergent parallel mixed-methods study to examine the use of Community of Inquiry-informed Facebook discussion activities on the speaking performances of undergraduate students in a blended EFL speaking class in Bangladesh. A Facebook group was maintained for both the treatment and control conditions; however, the discussion activities were required only by the treatment condition. We found a statistically significant difference between the initial and post-test speaking scores for the treatment and control conditions. While no difference was observed in post-test scores between the two conditions, students’ and the instructor’s comments on the Facebook group and student interview data revealed that Facebook was helpful for both conditions in imp...
The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2017
This case study examined a team of instructors’ use of social presence, teaching presence, and at... more This case study examined a team of instructors’ use of social presence, teaching presence, and attitudinal dissonance in a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) on Animal Behaviour and Welfare (ABW), designed to facilitate attitudinal learning. The study reviewed a team of six instructors’ use of social presence and teaching presence by applying the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, as well as the establishment of attitudinal dissonance within the announcements and discussion forums. The instructors entered the MOOC as a collaborative facilitation team and created a highly balanced manner of communication and positive atmosphere within the course. The instructional design focused on creating an informative and knowledgeable network of global learners that would agree that animal welfare was a critical social issue in today’s society. These course goals and facilitation intentions were demonstrated through a high number of social and teaching presence indicators, with a significant u...
The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2016
This study examines a MOOC instructor’s use of social presence, teaching presence, and dissonance... more This study examines a MOOC instructor’s use of social presence, teaching presence, and dissonance for attitudinal change in a MOOC on Human Trafficking, designed to promote attitudinal change. Researchers explored the MOOC instructor’s use of social presence and teaching presence, using the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework as a lens, and examined the facilitation of attitudinal dissonance within the discussion forum, announcements and blog postings in the course. The instructor entered the MOOC with the idea of serving as a co-participant and a facilitation choice was made to address the issue of multiple perspectives and experiences. The instructional design focused on establishing a collaborative community of learners and this was demonstrated through a high number of social presence indicators but with significant use of all three areas in evidence. Findings present a detailed examination of instructor strategies in a MOOC designed to focus on the establishment of a collabora...
Proceedings from eLSE: The 5 th International …, 2009
Abstract: This paper examines how the efficacy of new online learning technologies can be assesse... more Abstract: This paper examines how the efficacy of new online learning technologies can be assessed with indicators of the Community of Inquiry Framework (CoI). The CoI framework has attracted considerable interest and has been used extensively to study and design online ...
This study investigates the impact of peer feedback used as an instructional strategy to increase... more This study investigates the impact of peer feedback used as an instructional strategy to increase the quality of students' online postings. While peer feedback has been demonstrated to support students' learning in traditional classrooms, little is known about its efficacy in online discussions. To address this gap, we examined students' perceptions of the value of giving and receiving peer feedback, specifically related to the quality of discussion postings in an online course. In addition, we investigated the impact of that ...
Interaction is an essential element of online learning and researchers had use Social Learning An... more Interaction is an essential element of online learning and researchers had use Social Learning Analytics (SLA) to understand the characteristics of meaningful interaction. While the potential for network analysis in education (i.e., SLA) is valuable, limited research has considered how best to use this emerging field to inform meaningful interaction in online settings. Online learning researchers need a concise and simplified framework for SLA to support interaction in online learning environments. Therefore, we present a conceptual framework to make SLA accessible for researchers investigating learners' interactions in online learning. The framework includes concepts from network theory and the online learning literature integrated into a new perspective to analyze learners' online behaviors and interactions. We analyzed existing models and frameworks to show how network analysis has been used in online learning resulting in a conceptual environment to investigate learner i...
Utilizando tres constructos interdependientes, la presencia social, cognitiva y docente, el marco... more Utilizando tres constructos interdependientes, la presencia social, cognitiva y docente, el marco de la Comunidad de Indagación es un modelo teórico de proceso del aprendizaje en línea. En específico, la presencia docente se divide en tres subelementos —a) facilitación del discurso, b) instrucción directa y c) diseño y organización instruccional— que trabajan en conjunto para crear un ambiente colaborativo-constructivista para el aprendizaje. Se analizaron datos de la encuesta de la Comunidad de Indagación de 160 estudiantes en 11 grupos mediante un análisis de varianza (ANOVA) unidireccional para determinar si existían diferencias estadísticamente significativas entre los puntajes de la presencia docente entre grupos de dos cursos en línea con un diseño de curso idéntico impartidos por profesores diferentes. Los resultados mostraron diferencias significativas entre los puntajes de la presencia docente de profesores individuales en ambos cursos. En específico, se encontraron diferen...
The ten research articles in this year’s issue showcased research devoted to advancing high-quali... more The ten research articles in this year’s issue showcased research devoted to advancing high-quality online learning around four themes: learner engagement, the use synchronous video-based communication to support teaching, instructors’ perspectives and experiences, and pedagogical recommendations.
The American Educational Research Association (AERA) is a research society that “strives to advan... more The American Educational Research Association (AERA) is a research society that “strives to advance knowledge about education, to encourage scholarly inquiry related to education, and to promote the use of research to improve education and serve the public good” (2022). The association aims to encourage educational research studies and promote the practical implications of research findings. With 12 divisions and more than 150 special interest groups (SIGs), AERA provides advanced information to generate connections across practitioners, the field’s leading researchers, and policymakers. AERA includes more than 25,000 members from 85 countries, including faculty, researchers, evaluators, graduate students, university deans, research directors, and higher education administrators.In 2022, the AERA annual meeting was both place-based in San Diego, California, and virtual, with the theme of “Cultivating Equitable Education Systems for the 21st Century”. As an influential special intere...
The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning
Using three interdependent constructs: social, cognitive, and teaching presence, the Community of... more Using three interdependent constructs: social, cognitive, and teaching presence, the Community of Inquiry framework is a theoretical process model of online learning. Specifically, teaching presence contains three sub-elements—(a) facilitation of discourse, (b) direct instruction, and (c) instructional design and organization—that work together to create a collaborative-constructivist learning environment. Data from the Community of Inquiry survey from 160 learners in 11 course sections were analyzed using a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to determine whether statistically significant differences existed in teaching presence scores between sections of two online courses with identical course design taught by different instructors. Results showed significant differences between individual instructors’ teaching presence scores for each of the two courses. Specifically, significant differences were found in each sub-element of teaching presence except for one course’s instruction...
This multiple case study explores how instructors conceptualize and employ scaffolding in online ... more This multiple case study explores how instructors conceptualize and employ scaffolding in online courses. Participants included full time faculty (n = 4) who have designed and taught at least one online course within the past 12 months. Data sources included pre-interview surveys, semi-structured interviews, and online course observations. Data were analyzed by employing a general analytical strategy for developing a case description (Yin, 2018). The results showed that (a) instructors define scaffolding as a support to help students achieve course outcomes and (b) instructors implement different types of scaffolding (i.e., conceptual, metacognitive, procedural, strategic, and motivational) in hard and soft scaffolding forms. The results also showed that instructors' conceptualization and implementation of scaffolding differed based on their discipline and teaching philosophy, and the unique features of online courses. Implications for practice and research are discussed.
Social presence theory was the term fi rst proposed in 1976 to explain how telecommunications inf... more Social presence theory was the term fi rst proposed in 1976 to explain how telecommunications infl uence how people communicate (Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976). Short and colleagues (1976) defi ned social presence as the degree of salience (i.e., quality or state of being there) between two communicators using a communication medium. This theory became particularly important for online educators trying to understand how people communicated in primarily text-based online courses during the 1990s (Lowenthal, 2009). In fact, social presence was identifi ed as one of the core elements of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, a widely used guide for planning, developing, evaluating, and researching online learning (Boston et al., 2009; Garrison & Arbaugh, 2007; Kumar, Dawson, Black, Cavanaugh, & Sessums, 2011; Kumar & Ritzhaupt, 2014; Swan, Day, Bogle, & Matthews, 2014). The CoI framework is a dynamic process model of online learning based on the theory that effective learning re...
Social Presence in Online Learning: Multiple Perspectives on Practice and Research, 2017
Social presence theory was the term first proposed in 1976 to explain how telecommunications infl... more Social presence theory was the term first proposed in 1976 to explain how telecommunications influence how people communicate (Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976). Short and colleagues (1976) defined social presence as the degree of salience (i.e., quality or state of being there) between two communicators using a communication medium. This theory became particularly important for online educators trying to understand how people communicated in primarily text-based online courses during the 1990s (Lowenthal, 2009). In fact, social presence was identified as one of the core elements of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, a widely used guide for planning, developing, evaluating, and researching online learning (Boston et al., 2011; Kumar & Ritzhaupt, 2014; Swan, Day, Bogle, & Matthews, 2014). The CoI framework is a dynamic process model of online learning based on the theory that effective learning requires a community based on inquiry (Garrison, 2011,2015). At the heart of the model are the interdependent constructs of cognitive, social, and teaching presence (Swan, Garrison, & Richardson, 2009). Social presence, the first element, is the ability of participants "to project their personal characteristics into the community, thereby presenting themselves to other participants as 'real people'" (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000, p. 89). The second element, teaching presence, involves instructional management, building understanding, and direct instruction. And the third element, cognitive presence, is "the extent to which the participants in...a community of inquiry are able to construct meaning through sustained communication" (Garrison et al., 2000, p. 89).
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