Presenting instructional content online requires faculty to consider course
objectives and the learning outcomes that are produced. How those outcomes are
achieved and by how many students are important concerns of higher education
institutions and their faculty members
Constructivism, on the other hand, is founded on the notion that “the
only important reality is in the learner’s mind, and the goal of learning is to
construct in the learner’s mind its own, unique conception of events”
learner is not a passive recipient but rather the center of instruction
constructivists believe in independent exploration by students that will lead to
a deeper understanding of the content
cooperative/collaborative approach
socio-cultural model
cooperative or collaborative model of learning argues that learning occurs as an
individual interacts with other individuals
socio-cultural model of learning argues that learning best occurs when the
learning event is meaningful, more deeply or elaborately processed, situated in
context, and rooted in the learner’s cultural background and personal knowledge
one goal is to create a meaningful environment that includes communication and
collaboration
New technologies allow for construction of knowledge through what is actually
deeper reflection by the learner
Through groups and other learning interactions with their online peers, students
acquire deeper understanding because of the “opportunities for exposure to
multiple perspectives and interpretations
Learning involves both
social/cultural and individual processes
socializing function by fostering a friendly environment
Organizing involves setting the objectives, procedural rules, and
timetables
intellectual role,
guide the students’ journey to understanding. This is accomplished by probing
and questioning students about their responses, by summarizing main themes, and
by linking these to assignments such as readings, written responses, and
independent and group projects.
discussion board posts serve as learning artifacts as well as springboards for
more learning and the development of community
social negotiation and mediation
authentic and real-world environments
Teachers serve primarily as
guides and facilitators
prompting students to develop
their own inquiry questions
allowing students to express
their knowledge through multiple avenues
encouraging group projects and
collaborative learning
If, on the other hand, we believe that learners actively construct knowledge in
their attempts to make sense of their world, then learning will likely emphasize
the development of meaning and understanding
use of discussion boards
provide forums that require students to research an area of interest and report
back to the class in the forum
incorporates collaborative elements
instructor should build in as many collaborative opportunities for group work
The purpose of this study is to provide conceptual order and a tool for the use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) and computer conferencing in supporting an educational experience. Central to the study introduced here is a model of community inquiry that constitutes three elements essential to an educational transactioncognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence.
Akyol, Z., & Garrison, D. R. (2011). Assessing metacognition in an online community of inquiry. The Internet and Higher Education, 14(3), 183-190. doi: 10.1016/j.iheduc.2011.01.005
Concerns surrounding the lack of physical presence in an online learning environment
have led researchers to investigate the concept of presence when learning online
Early work focused on social presence and the idea of participation and belonging
Social presence is a factor that contributes to building a
community of learners
"the degree of
feeling, perception, and reaction to another intellectual entity in the CMC
environment"
"feeling intimacy or togetherness
in terms of sharing time and place"
"the ability of learners
to project themselves socially and emotionally in a community of inquiry"
Five themes regarding what learners perceived was missing from their online
learning experience emerged: robustness of online dialogue, spontaneity and
improvisation, perceiving and being perceived by the other, getting to know
others, and learning to be an online learner.
Explication of social presence, one of three elements in the community of inquiry model developed by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer. Community of inquiry model discussed.
Bill Pelz, Professor & Internet Academy Coordinator at Herkimer County Community College, shares his ideas about teaching presence and the Community of Inquiry.
"Student-led discussions not only insure that students will read and think about concepts in the textbook, they empower students and develop a culture of inquiry."
This line of research indicated that the multivariate measure of learning represented by the cognitive presence factor could be predicted by the quality of teaching presence and social presence reported by learners in online courses. The relationship between these constructs is illustrated in Fig. 1 below.
Given the electronic, social, and “self-directed” nature of online learning, it seems imperative that we examine learner self- and co-regulation in online environments especially as they relate to desired outcomes such as higher levels of cognitive presence as described in the CoI framework.
self-efficacy can be viewed as a subjective judgment of one’s level of competence in executing certain behaviors or achieving certain outcomes in the future. Self-efficacy has been identified as the best predictor of college GPA and among the best predictors of college persistence through meta-analytic research (Robbins et al., 2004). Further, commenting on the state of the art in self-regulated learning research Winne suggested that self-regulation is contingent on positive self-efficacy beliefs, arguing that “learners must subscribe to a system of epistemological and motivational beliefs that classifies failure as an occasion to be informed, a condition that is controllable, and a stimulus to spend effort to achieve better” (Winne, 2005). This contrast of failure attribution as trait (e.g., “I’m just not good at math”) versus failure as occasion to be informed (“I can control, adapt, and learn from this”) is a classic view of maladaptive and adaptive self-efficacy beliefs.
In the current study we therefore examine the relationship between CoI constructs and elements of self efficacy in order to begin to investigate the larger theme of collaborative online learner regulation and learning presence.
Thus, self-efficacy is “concerned not with what one has but with belief in what one can do with whatever resources one can muster” (Bandura, 2007, p. 6).
Bandura has noted that slightly elevated efficacy can have a bigger impact on subsequent performance. Overestimating one’s capabilities to produce a behavior and outcome may boost performance and give rise to motivation to persist in face of obstacles and seatback, while the opposite is true for underestimating one’s capabilities, which may suppress productive goals, persistence and effort (Bandura, 2007). Thus there is an important connection between self-efficacy, effort, and subsequent performance.
Positive psychological and emotional states in the aftermath of successful execution of certain academic behaviors naturally lead to sense of competence and subsequently results in enhanced sense of efficacy.
This is the "feeling of satsfaction" Lisa Martin referred to in her Module 3 posts on social presence.
We suggest here that elements within the CoI framework may serve as mechanisms for supporting self-efficacy. Specifically we conjecture that effective teaching presence and positive social presence should serve as sources of social persuasion and positive affect supportive of self-efficacy.
(Bandura, 1997). These and other studies have suggested that self-efficacy has a substantial role in predicting student engagement, motivation and performance (
[Bong, 2004],
[Caraway et al., 2003],
[Chemers et al., 2001],
[Choi, 2005],
[Smith et al., 2001] and [Vrugt et al., 2002]).
The participants in the study were a random sample of 3165 students from 42 two- and four-year institutions in New York State.
SLN? See how many things you can learn with one really great data set?
Gaining knowledge about the reasons for learning and achievement of online students has attracted a great deal of attention among both researchers and practitioners. Understanding the factors that have an influence on the success of online education has significant implications for designing productive online communities.
Reviewing studies that investigated elements of online learner self-regulation
This ongoing project to document all instances of teaching, social, and cognitive presence in complete online courses also resulted in identification of learner discourse that did not fit within the model, i.e. could not be reliably coded as indicators of teaching, social, or cognitive presence (
[Shea, 2010] and [Shea et al., 2010]).
Additional work on the CoI model (Shea, Vickers, & Hayes, 2010) suggested that past research methods may have resulted in a systematic under representation of the instructional effort involved in online education.
These exceptions represent interesting data for refining and enhancing the model as they suggest that learners are attempting to accomplish goals that are not accounted for within the CoI framework.
In this paper we examine the Community of Inquiry framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) suggesting that the model may be enhanced through a fuller articulation of the roles of online learners. We present the results of a study of 3165 students in online and hybrid courses from 42 two- and four-year institutions in which we examine the relationship between learner self-efficacy measures and their ratings of the quality of their learning in virtual environments. We conclude that a positive relationship exists between elements of the CoI framework and between elements of a nascent theoretical construct that we label “learning presence”. We suggest that learning presence represents elements such as self-efficacy as well as other cognitive, behavioral, and motivational constructs supportive of online learner self-regulation.
the CoI framework attempts to articulate the social, technological, and pedagogical processes that engender collaborative knowledge construction. It therefore represents an effort to resolve the greatest challenge to the quality of online education
Learner discussions also included efforts to divide up tasks, manage time, and set goals in order to successfully complete group projects. As such they appeared to be indicators of online learner self and co-regulation, which can be viewed as the degree to which students in collaborative online educational environments are metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviorally active participants in the learning process (Winters & Azevedo, 2005).
the authors concluded that all the studies converged on advantageous outcomes for providing support for “metacognitive” learning strategies including self-reflection, self-explanation, and self-monitoring.
successfully orchestrating a dialogue demands fairly sophisticated skills. Conversational contributions need to be simultaneously parsed according to their disciplinary value, their location within the chain of collective argumentation, their relevance to the instructional goals, and their role as indicators of the student’s ongoing understanding. The outcome of this complex appraisal is a sense of the amount and quality of the guidance that specific contributions and the conversation as a whole require to support learning.” (Larreamendy-Joerns & Leinhardt, p. 591)
Zhao et al. also concluded that studies in which instructor interaction with students was medium to high resulted in better learning outcomes for online students relative to classroom learners.
If you click on "Available on the Web", you are able to "attend" an archived Elluminate Live! discussion on the topics of teaching and cognitive presence.
"A meaningful assignment is grounded in a meaningful learning experience overall. We can't just drop a gem of an assignment from on high, when the rest of the course has been stultifying, and expect stellar outcomes. No matter how well-designed the assignment, it has to be embedded in a framework of trust and energized inquiry. "