Exploring causal relationships among teaching, cognitive and social presence: Student perceptions of the community of inquiry framework

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Abstract

The causal relationships among the three presences in the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework are explored and tested in this paper. The CoI framework has been used extensively in the research and practice of online and blended learning contexts. With the development of a survey instrument based on the CoI framework, it is possible to test the hypothesized causal relationships that teaching and social presence have a significant perceived influence on cognitive presence and that teaching presence is perceived to influence social presence. The results of this study confirm the factor structure of the CoI survey and the hypothesized causal relationships among the presences predicted by the CoI framework. These results point to the key role of teaching presence in establishing and sustaining a community of inquiry. Further research is called for to explore the dynamic relationships among the presences across disciplines and institutions as well as understand the existence and role of the specific sub-elements (categories) of each presence.

Introduction

Online and blended learning is pervading higher education and research activity around it has increased significantly (Allen & Seaman, 2008). It has also been reported that “[m]ethods of research, teaching and learning are expanding as new interactive media support innovative forms of pedagogy” (Dede, 2008, Overview, lines 10–11). At the same time, it has been argued that web-based teaching and learning research “efforts are often so diffuse and contradictory … [that we] have failed to break much new pedagogical ground” (Hannafin & Kim, 2003, p. 347). This raises new research questions, particularly about communities of learning and collaborative inquiry and the potential to break new ground pedagogically. The challenge is to systematically explore the integration of pedagogical ideals and new communications technology that will advance the evolution of higher education as opposed to reinforcing existing practices. Such an approach requires a holistic framework and methodology.

It is argued here that to advance our understanding of online learning in higher education, a coherent theoretical framework must guide investigations into the research and practice of web-based online teaching and learning. Despite the fragmentation of research in online learning, there is growing interest and optimism around its potential. Moreover, in terms of a driving pedagogical concept, a consensus concerning the importance and congruence between online learning and collaborative constructivist approaches to teaching and learning has emerged. One promising theoretical perspective based on collaborative constructivist principles is the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000).

The research reported here is a study of the online learning Community of Inquiry framework (described in next section). This theoretical framework and methodology has grown in prominence and has been used in hundreds of studies over the last decade (Arbaugh et al., 2008). As significant as this research is, much of it has relied on qualitative methodologies and focused on individual elements of the framework. In the present context, the goal is to quantitatively explore the causal relationships among all three of its core elements — teaching presence, cognitive presence and social presence. To date, little research has been reported that quantitatively analyses the dynamic relationships among the Community of Inquiry presences. Considering the inherently dynamic nature of the CoI framework, it is crucial that we begin to study the causal connections among its elements.

The first step in this quest is to establish construct coherence by assessing the interpretability of the factor structure of the Community of Inquiry survey instrument used to measure learner perceptions of teaching, cognitive and social presence. The second step is to assess whether perceptions of teaching and social presence predict cognitive presence as hypothesized by the framework. The next section describes the dynamics of the framework and reviews the validating research.

Section snippets

Conceptual framework

The concept of a community of inquiry provides the order and structural elements needed to begin the process of understanding the complexities of online learning. The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework reflects the dynamic nature of higher-order learning and has shown to be useful in guiding research and practice in online higher education (Garrison & Arbaugh, 2007). It is grounded in a broad base of research in teaching and learning in higher education (Garrison & Anderson, 2003). The

Methodology

This study used the CoI Survey Instrument (Arbaugh et al., 2008, Swan et al., 2008) to gather data using an online survey. The instrument was developed collaboratively based on previous CoI research. It was tested using 287 student responses from four institutions in the United States and Canada. It has been conceptually and empirically validated and holds a Cronbach's Alpha reliability of .84 (Arbaugh et al., 2008). The 34 items of the CoI survey (see Table 1) were randomized to distribute

Factor analysis

Exploratory factor analysis using an oblimin rotation was used to extract three factors. A three factor solution provided clean loadings and interpretability in terms of the theoretical framework (see Table 1). All of the CoI items loaded significantly (> .35) as expected across the three presences. Loadings under .35 are not listed in Table 1. There were no double loadings.

Structural equation modeling

Consistent with the CoI framework, the structural equation model did confirm the hypothesized relationships among the three

Discussion

The first goal of this study was to determine an interpretable factor structure for the Community of Inquiry framework as measured by the CoI Survey. All the CoI Survey questions loaded cleanly on the hypothesized factors thus confirming the validity of the theoretical structure of the survey and providing the data to assess the hypothesized relationships among the three presences. The confirmed validity and usefulness of the CoI Survey to conduct large scale quantitative studies need to be

Conclusion

The evidence is growing that the Community of Inquiry framework is a useful theoretical tool to understand the complexities of the causal relationships among teaching, social and cognitive presences. The framework has provided the theoretical foundation for the development of an empirical survey instrument that opens the possibilities for conducting a wide range of studies that were not possible using qualitative methodologies, such as transcript analysis alone. The results reported here and

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