The CoI framework is comprised of three interdependent and dynamic structural elements: social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence.
Social Presence
Social presence has been defined recently by Garrison (2009) as “the ability of participants to identify with the community (e.g., course of study), communicate purposefully in a trusting environment, and develop inter-personal relationships by way of projecting their individual personalities” (p. 352). There are three categories of social presence: affective expression, open communication, and group cohesion.
Cognitive Presence
Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2001) define cognitive presence as “the extent to which the participants in any particular configuration of a community of inquiry are able to construct meaning through sustained communication” (p. 11). Based on the practical inquiry model, it consists of four phases: triggering event, exploration, integration, and resolution.
Teaching Presence
Teaching presence is defined as “the design, facilitation and direction of cognitive and social processes for the purpose of realizing personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile learning outcomes” (Anderson, Rourke, Garrison, & Archer, 2001, p. 5). There are three categories of teaching presence: design and organization, facilitating discourse, and direct instruction.
For learners interacting with others in different learning networks, the CoI framework is limiting. many such learners seek ways to coordinate their activity and
Autonomous Blogging Framework (ABF)
This is a learner-centered model for student bloggers to address the development of learner self-regulation. Unlike the CoI model, which describes learners as primarily dependent upon others’ social presence to feel motivated to learn, the ABF model describes the learning activities of student bloggers who are self-motivated and autonomous, who invite and enjoy cooperative and collaborative learning opportunities, but who can just as readily remain motivated and engage in solitary learning using their blog as their central node, as the hub of their personal learning environment. Unlike learners described under the CoI framework, these autonomous learners remain engaged and motivated despite the lack of social, cognitive or teacher presence.
The autonomous blogging framework suggests a complimentary approach to the Community of Inquiry Framework, and provides more detail about the practical inquiry process in which learners engage in three interrelated learning activities: knowledge construction, network construction, and identity construction. Rather than approach the formation of community as the primary goal of educators, seen from a macro perspective, the autonomous blogging framework instead considers the rational decision-making activities of individual learners.
Both frameworks aim to “…assess the nature and quality of critical, reflective discourse that takes place within an online learning environment” (Garrison, Anderson, Archer, 2004). These authors argued that critical thinking, as a product, is best understood from an individual perspective. Unlike the CoI framework, however, which examines the iterations between private reflection and public discourse, the autonomous blogging framework examines the process of cooperative, synergistic sense-making.
In contrast to cognitive presence, which involves meaning-making through sustained interaction with others, knowledge construction requires learners to engage in information seeking, gathering, and sense-making from a variety of online resources independently of others.
In contrast to social presence, Network construction – learners actively engage in forming, strengthening, and expanding their personal web of connections with others, and participate as both presenter and as part of student audiences in ever more widely in more cooperative and collaborative learning events.
Identity construction – learners actively participate in transformative self-making, engaging in recollection, reflection and resolution of transitional life events, and undertaking personal story-telling to interpret and make sense of conflicting expectations, intentions, goals, roles, and perspectives as learners.
In contrast to cognitive presence, which involves meaning-making through sustained interaction with others, knowledge construction requires learners to engage in information-seeking, gathering, and sense-making from a variety of online resources independently of others, for independent purposes.
In contrast to social presence, in which the onus of responsibility for connection rests with the designer and instructors, and less so with the learners, network construction involves the process in which individual learners develop the attitudes and skills to actively pursue and engage with others in forming, strengthening, and expanding their personal web of connections with others, and participate as both presenter and as part of student audiences in ever more widely in more cooperative and collaborative learning events.
The concept of social presence pre-supposes that learners are in need of support from their instructors and the from the created online learning environment, that is, there is a perspective that learners are essentially passive, and that the umbrella of support is essential to learner success. Undoubtedly, this is true for many learners in the early stages of their development as autonomous learners. However, I argue that the idea of a Community of Inquiry limits learners to an apprentice role, and assumes that most of what is learned is within the borders of the individual CoI.
Identity construction involves the process in which learners actively participate in transformative self-making, engaging in recollection, reflection and resolution of transitional life events, and undertaking personal story-telling to interpret and make sense of conflicting expectations, intentions, goals, roles, and perspectives as learners.
Practical Inquiry Model:
Trigger event: “evocative”
Initiation phase of critical inquiry process, in which an issue, dilemma, or problem that emerges from experience is identified or recognized;
Exploration: “inquisitive”
participants shift between the private, reflective world of the individual and the social exploration of ideas; occurs within CoI by iteratively moving between the private and shared worlds— between critical reflection and discourse; activities: brainstorming, questioning, and exchange of information
Integration: “tentative”
constructing meaning from the ideas generated in the exploratory phase;
students move repeatedly between reflection and discourse.
“This phase is the most difficult to detect from a teaching or research perspective. Evidence of the integration of ideas and the construction of meaning must be inferred from communication within the community of inquiry”
“This phase requires active teaching presence to diagnose misconceptions, to provide probing questions, comments, and additional information in an effort to ensure continuing cognitive development, and to model the critical thinking process.”
Resolution: “committed”
implementation of proposed solution; testing hypothesis;
Involves some way for learners to apply newly created knowledge
Cognitive Apprenticeships should allow students to actively practice what they have learned in a mock “real-life” environment (Driscoll, 2005, 174-175). This practice can be broken down to five components (Convey, 1997):
- Modeling: involves an expert’s carrying out a task so that student can observe and build a conceptual model of the processes that are required to accomplish the task. For example, a teacher might model the reading process by reading aloud in one voice, while verbalizing her thought processes (summarize what she just read, what she thinks might happen next) in another voice.
- Coaching: consists of observing students while they carry out a task and offering hints, feedback, modeling, reminders, etc.
- Articulation: includes any method of getting students to articulate their knowledge, reasoning, or problem-solving processes.
- Reflection: enables students to compare their own problem-solving processes with those of an expert or another student.
- Exploration: involves pushing students into a mode of problem solving on their own. Forcing them to do exploration is critical, if they are to learn how to frame questions or problems that are interesting and that they can solve (Collins, Brown, Newman, 1989, 481-482).
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