Jared Stein's grad-school-community blog on teaching and learning.

Garrison, D. R. (1997). Computer conferencing: the post-industrial age of distance education. Journal of Open and Distance Learning, 12(2), 3-11.

Recognizes the power of computer conferencing –especially asynchronous online forums–as compared to live, synchronous conversation. This distinguishes a new era of distance education, a post-industrial era. “…computer conferences may be globally accessible but are not mass education.” (10) Proposes cognitive presence and social presence in these environments.

This offers an interesting, historical perspective of the change from independent study to more modern distance learning practices as provided for by the web. One generally salient quote: “Technological world-views must be associated with educational ideals if we are note to be blindly driven by technology.”(9)

Garrison, D., & Arbaugh, J. (2007). Researching the community of inquiry framework: Review, issues, and future directions. The Internet and Higher Education, 10(3), 157-172.

This literature review focuses on the community of inquiry framework and its elements, categories, and indicators. Social presence appears to support learning outcomes and student satisfcation. Cognitive presence may be enhanced “via a variety of online course formats” (162). It is difficulty to move inquiry beyond info exchange or exploration to synthesis and resolution without practical application questions or appropriate tasks, or possibly metacognitive awareness. Teaching presence is shown in numerous studies to be important for “successful online learning” (163) though instructional design, facilitation, and instruction. Finally, numerous gaps in research are identified.

The importance of teaching presence and social presence for positive learning outcomes seems clear. The significance of social presence is more ambiguous, and may not be as clearly related to learning outcomes. I speculate that social presence may motivate students due to shared goals, or may motivate because of reinforcement of feelings of ego gratification or group acceptance and belonging, and may affect learning outcomes because the emotional response–the affective factor that we talk about in language learning–that comes from positive or negative interaction makes information or tasks more memorable.

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2010). The first decade of the community of inquiry framework: A retrospective. The Internet and Higher Education, 13(1-2), 5-9.

This “personal perspective” of the development of the Community of Inquiry framework summarizes the originators collaborative work to develop the descriptive and exploratory framework focused on Social Presence, Cognitive Presence, and Teaching Presence. The framework built upon the work of Dewey on social activity, In context of the era, CoI was especially important in recognizing the value of “computer conferening”–asynchronous text-based communication that encourages reflective and critical thought. For much of the 10 years since CoI was developed, research methods centered on quantitative transcript analysis despite its challenges in validity and reliability. A “psychometrically sound CoI instrument” has been recently development to study student perceptions via survey results. The researchers conclude by looking forward to the use of the CoI instrument in blended learning and the framework “as a predictor of learning processes and … outcomes” (9).

This article is helpful in bringing readers up to speed on the short history and current research of CoI. While it doesn’t present new information or provoke questions or research directions, it does make visible the typically unseen developmental process of an important framework and the dedicated collaborative work that has gone into CoI over the years.