Community of inquiry model

Definition

The community of inquiry model is an instructional design model for e-learning developed by Randy Garrison and Terri Anderson.

See also: social presence, community

The model

{{quotation | "A critical community of learners, from an educational perspective, is composed of teachers and students transacting with the specific purposes of facilitating, constructing, and validating understanding, and of developing capabilities that will lead to further learning. Such a community encourages cognitive independence and social interdependence simultaneously." (Garrison & Anderson, 2003:23)

The community of inquiry model defines a good e-learning environment through three major compoents:

1. Social presence:
2. Cognitive presence:
3. Teaching presence:

[[Image: Garrison_Anderson_community_of_inquiry.

Note the pivotal role of social presence in not only setting the educational climate but also in supporting discourse and creating the educational experience. We defined social presence as "the ability of learners to project themselves socially and affectively into a community of inquiry" (Rourke, Anderson, Archer, & Garrison, 1999). We spent some time developing tools to measure social presence in asynchronous text conferencing systems and validating these tools via interviews and surveys (Rourke & Anderson, 2002). This work has been extended and quantified by a number of researchers (Tu, 2002; Stacey, 2002) demonstrating amongst other findings that social presence is correlated with student satisfaction and higher scores on learning outcomes (Richardson & Swan, 2003).

References

• Anderson, Terry (2005). Distance learning - social software's killer ap ?, 17th Biennial Conference of the Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, 9-11 november 2005. [ http://www.unisa.edu.au/odlaaconference/PPDF2s/13%20odlaa%20-%20Anderson.pdf PDF]

• Randy Garrison & Terry Anderson, (2003). E-Learning in the 21st Century: A Framework for Research and Practice, 2003, p. 23.

• Rourke, L. & Anderson, T. (2002). Exploring social presence in computer conferencing. Journal of Interactive Learning Research, 13(3), 259-275. PDF

• Richardson, J.C. & Swan, K. (2003). Examining social presence in online courses in relation to students' perceived learning and satisfaction. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 7 (1), pp.68-88.H

• Rourke, L., Anderson, T., Archer, W. & Garrison,

D.R. (1999). Assessing social presence in asynchronous, text-based computer conferences. Journal of Distance Education, 14 (3), pp.51-70.

• Stacey, E. (2002). Social presence online: Networking learners at a distance, education and information technologies. Education and Information Technologies, 7 (4), pp.287-294.

• Tu, C.H. (2002). The measurement of social presence in an online learning environment. International Journal on E-Learning, 1 (2), pp.34-45. pdf