- “the ability of learners to project their personal characteristics into the community of inquiry, thereby presenting themselves as ‘real people’” (Garrison, Cleveland-Innes, & Vaughan, 2001). 
Social Presence is evident through three indicators: affect, open communication and group cohesion. 
- "the degree of salience of the other person in the interaction and the consequent salience of the interpersonal relationships.” (Williams, Short, Christie, 1976)
- “the degree to which a person is perceived as a ‘real person’ in
mediated communication" (Gunawardena, 1995)
- "definitions of social presence tend to lie on a continuum where a focus on interpersonal emotional connection between communicators is on one end and a focus on if someone is perceived as being ‘present’, ‘there’ or ‘real’ at the other end" (Lowenthal, 2011)

Social Presence 

 “the design, facilitation, and direction of cognitive and social processes for the purpose of realizing personally meaningful and educational worthwhile learning outcomes” (Garrison et al., 2001).
 It consists of three categories: design and organization, facilitating discourse and direct instruction.

Teaching Presence

“the extent to which the participants in any particular configuration of a community of inquiry are able to construct meaning through sustained communication.” (Garrison et al., 2001). 
Cognitive Presence is based on the Practical Inquiry model (Garrison et al., 1999). 

Cognitive Presence 

Learners' satisfaction and persistence are two major indicators of success in an online learning course. The more students are satisfied with their learning, the more they are willing to continue said learning. The community inquiry framework (COI) is a robust pedagogical model to try to resolve this concern. This study aims to integrate perceived presence (teacher, social, and cognitive) and perceived technology usefulness to identify relationships among these variables.

Online university students' satisfaction and persistence

Formal learning communities try to restructure university curricula to combat structural barriers to excelling in education by emphasizing interactions between students, faculty, and staff. 

The following are basic characteristics of learning communities:

1. Organizing students and faculty into smaller groups
2. Encouraging integration of the curriculum
3. Helping students establish academic and social support networks
4. Providing a setting for students to be socialized to the expectations of college
5. Bringing faculty together in more meaningful ways
6. Focusing faculty and students on learning outcomes
7. Providing a setting for community-based delivery of academic support programs

Formal Learning Community

- Teaching presence had a significant effect on both social and cognitive presence (consistent with prior research)
- Social presence had a significant effect on cognitive presence 
- Social presence had a mediating effect between teaching and cognitive presence 
- teaching/cognitive presence and perceived usefulness showed positive effects on learner satisfaction
- Learner satisfaction significantly predicted persistence 
- Presence variable and perceived usefulness failed to directly predict persistence (in contrast to prior research) 


Levels of presence and effects on usefulness and satisfaction

In a flipped-classroom study analyzed through the Community of Inquiry lens, several factors were found to contribute to learning:
- The educational videos supported learning through Teaching Presence (the instructional design and organization function): they integrated resources, organized the theory, highlighted what was important, provided summaries, supplemented the textbook with explanations, and illustrated ideas with relevant examples.
- Students who arrived unprepared could not answer the questions, contribute to the subsequent group discussions, or pose questions and clarify misunderstandings during discussion and reflection. After the first seminar, all students arrived suitably prepared.
- There was no correlation between student grades and video-access behavior, suggesting that video use was a personalized activity reflecting individual learning preferences and personal circumstances.
- Blackboard (Bb) trace data in both cohorts showed near-identical dates and frequency of accessing the videos and slides, suggesting they were studied together.

How did the flipped classroom contribute to learning?

Four constructs have been proposed as possible extensions to the Community of Inquiry Framework: learner presence, emotional presence, agency presence, and metacognition. These candidates emphasize self-regulation, motivation, and learning strategies. They may eventually converge into a single presence or be treated as exogenous variables rather than additions to the framework.

Proposed Extensions to the Community of Inquiry Framework

The intersecting three-presence framework, consisting of Social, Teaching and Cognitive Presences, that represented all the important activities in an educational experience.  

San Jose State University

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

University of California, Davis

Roux, I. L., & Nagel, L. (2018). Seeking the best blend for deep learning in a flipped classroom – viewing student perceptions through the Community of Inquiry lens. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 15(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-018-0098-x

Seeking the best blend for deep learning in a flipped classroom – viewing student perceptions through the Community of Inquiry lens

Research in learning science encompasses a wide array of focuses and topics. These include cognitive and motivational theories (such as expectancy-valence theory, self-determination theory, and constructivism), specific learning frameworks and strategies (such as Bloom's taxonomy of learning, the cognitive theory of drawing construction, learning by conceptual levels, and desirable difficulties), the evaluation of educational methods (such as the efficacy of traditional teaching methods and various modes of education), and the study of student outcomes and environments (such as learning analytics, student engagement, the Community of Inquiry framework, and the achievement gap in education).

Focuses of Learning Science

Joo, Y. J., Lim, K. Y., & Kim, E. K. (2011). Online university students satisfaction and persistence: Examining perceived level of presence, usefulness and ease of use as predictors in a structural model. Computers & Education, 57(2), 1654-1664. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2011.02.008

Online university students satisfaction and persistence: Examining perceived level of presence, usefulness and ease of use as predictors in a structural model

Community of Inquiry Framework

-  Providing only lectures, or video recordings of lectures, risks leaving students behind with cognitive gaps and misunderstandings if they cannot ask questions (Teaching Presence). 
-  The quality of deep learning depends on the quality of facilitation in the seminar, mediated by Social Presence. 
-  Seminars in the collaborative space fostered deep learning of the theory, and enabled students to apply the prepared theory in case studies and solve problems. Integration and particularly Resolution in Cognitive Presence of CoI featured in the seminars, while Social Presence was the weakest.
-  The most salient contribution of the seminars was Cognitive and Teaching Presence, with some Social Presence implied, confirming the importance of constructivist pedagogy to achieve deep applied learning. 

 How did the CoI presences manifest in a flipped classroom?

-  The data in this FC study is almost exclusively self-reported 
-  The population is a small-scale 

-  FC may fail due to monotonous and impersonal video lectures
-  Not having access to computers or the internet is a known barrier in flipped classrooms

Problems with flipped classrooms 

Humans can only learn one or at most two conceptual levels at a time. A person is able to learn the next level of concepts only after they have a stable understanding of the original. From then on, we are able to fine tune our understanding of the lower level concepts, while our learning focus is on the next level of abstraction.

Learning by Conceptual Levels

Readers may translate text into visual information by selecting, organizing and then integrating. Graphical representations such as concept maps, flow diagrams, and tree diagrams can be used to depict the structural and conceptual relationships found in text. By generating diagrams, readers are able to leverage spatial memory to develop a coherent understanding of the text.

Cognitive Theory of Drawing Construction

People behave based on the value that they perceive doing the behavior has to them. It takes into account expectancy (effort), instrumentality (performance) and valence (value/reward).

Expectancy-Valence Theories

Analyzes the effectiveness of passive teaching styles (i.e. lecturing or exams) on student learning. 

Efficacy of Traditional Teaching Methods

A theory of human motivation that posits that the reasons why an individual chooses to participate and exerts effort, are based on self-determined regulations (such as intrinsic motivation). It states there are 3 desires that promote optimal function and growth:
- 1) Autonomy
- 2) Competence
- 3) Relatedness

Self-determination theory (SDT)

The measure and study of sustained interaction with the medium. Engagement is different from Motivation in that it focuses on the user's willingness to continue interacting, rather than what inspires or spurs them into action.

Engagement

Learning analytics (LA) is the practice of collecting and analyzing data generated by teaching and learning activities in order to enhance student learning, academic progress, and teaching practices.

Learning Analytics

- MOOCs (massive open online courses)
- Blended Learning
- Online Learning
- Distance Learning
- E-learning

Mode of Education

A proposed hierarchy of understanding that can be used to evaluate a student's comprehension of a topic. From the highest level to the lowest level of understanding, they are:
- Creation / Create
- Evaluation / Evaluate
- Analysis / Analyze
- Application / Apply
- Comprehension / Understand
- Knowledge / Remember


Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning

A learning task that requires a considerable but desirable amount of effort, thereby improving long-term performance.

Examples:

- Interleaving Materials
- Spacing Studying
- Generation Effect
- Retrieval practice (testing)
- Varying Study Conditions

Desirable Difficulties

A theory that recognizes the learners' understanding and knowledge based on their own experiences prior to entering school. Rather than simply taking in knowledge, learners take the opportunity to reinforce and build their own understanding of the topic, derived from what they already know and what is being presented to them.

Constructivism (in Education)

The achievement gap is a persistent disparity in academic outcomes, such as grades, test scores, and graduation rates, observed among students from different demographic groups. These groups are often defined by ethnicity, race, and, in certain subjects, gender.

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