Online Teaching and Learning Theory: 

The Community of Inquiry Framework

LEARN: What and Why

The Community of Inquiry (CoI) model provides a useful framework or theory for conceptualizing how learning occurs among an online community of teachers and students.  It suggests that a successful educational experience is achieved through the interaction of three key elements: teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence.

CoI was first developed by Garrison, Anderson and Archer (2000), and for the last twenty years has served a strong theoretical basis for conducting research into quality online teaching and learning and for designing, developing and facilitating courses online (Pool, Reitsma & van den Berg, 2017).

Underpinning the CoI Framework is the notion that a “deep and meaningful educational experience” (Garrison et al., 2000, p. 88) within a community of inquiry is derived from activities such as questioning, connecting, deliberating, negotiating, challenging assumptions, and problem-solving. The CoI model “supports the design of online and blended courses as active learning environments or communities dependent on instructors and students sharing ideas, information, and opinions” (Picciano, 2017, p. 173). As such, it aligns and supports other commonly supported theories of teaching and learning such as social constructivism (e.g. Dewey, Vygotsky, Piaget) and cognitivism (e.g. Chomsky, Bloom) (Piaccino, 2017).

Elements of a successful educational experience (Garrison et al., 2000)

ENGAGE: How to do it

Develop your Teaching Presence

Through quality design and facilitation of the course, an instructor can develop their teaching presence.

• Design aspects:
  • determine course aims and materials
  • organize the structure, layout, and presentation of materials
  • choose appropriate and engaging instructional activities
  • create higher-order thinking assessments
• Facilitation aspects:
  • support students in building their understanding of course content through answering questions, guiding discussions, clarifying misconceptions and challenging concepts, and sharing opinions.

Develop your Social Presence

To facilitate socio-emotional interaction and support use a variety of text and video-based communication to interact with your students—and facilitate opportunities for learners to interact with each other

• Text communication:
  • participate in class discussions, mentioning specific people and comments
  • promptly reply to questions about the course or content
  • create spaces for small groups of students to interact and collaborate on coursework/projects (i.e. journals, discussion boards, etc.)
• Video communication:
  • use tools such as Voicethread, Zoom or Echo360 to create synchronous and asynchronous opportunities for students to see the faces and hear the voices of other members of the community, to engage in completing coursework, and to provide guidance and feedback

Develop Cognitive Presence

Critical thinking occurs when learners move through the following phases:

• recognizing a problem;
• exploring the problem through discussion and idea/information exchange;
• developing solutions; and
• applying new ideas/critically assessing solutions (Garrison et al., 2000)

You can create opportunities for learners to go through these processes by identifying your key learning objectives and creating learning opportunities that involve:

• problem solving
• collaboration and group projects
• critical discussions
• application and real-world simulations
• self/group-assessment and reflection

APPLY to your course

Reflect and Review

1. Review your course, asking:

• In what ways do I build teaching presence?
  • Is the design organization of course content clear and accessible?
  • Am I actively involved in helping student build their understanding of course content?
• In what ways do I build social presence?
  • Do I regularly communicate and promptly reply to students?
  • Do I create opportunities for students to interact and learn from one another?
• In what ways do I build cognitive presence?
  • How do I encourage critical thinking in my course?
  • Can I create more opportunities for students to problem-solve, collaborate, critically discuss, apply to the real work, and/or reflect?

2. Then, revise:

• Identify which aspects of teaching, social and cognitive presence need development.
• Try adding in more opportunities for your students to interact with each other and you; critical thinking activities that involve collaboration and teamwork; and additional mediums for representing course content.

References & Resources

Garrison, D. R. (2016). E-Learning in the 21st Century: A Community of Inquiry Framework for Research and Practice: Third Edition. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis.

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T, & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2, 87–105.

Jeffery, M. and A. Ahmad (2018). "A conceptual framework for efficient design of an online operations management course." Journal of Educators Online 15(3): 112-125.

Picciano, A.G. (2009). Blending with purpose: The multimodal model. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 13 (1). Needham, MA: The Sloan Consortium. pp. 7-18.

Pool, J., Reitsma, G., & van den Berg, D. (2017). Revised community of inquiry framework: Examining learning presence in a blended mode of delivery. Online Learning, 21(3), 153-165.

The Community of Inquiry. https://coi.athabascau.ca

Xin, C. (2012). A critique of the community of inquiry framework. Journal of Distance Education, 26(1), 1-15.