Abstract:

In this paper, we analyze the results of a survey posed to undergraduate students to evaluate their perceptions with respect to cognitive, social, and teaching presences in a hybrid Mathematical course. This hybrid scheme consisted of online and face-to-face classes.

The Community of Inquiry framework, developed by Garrison et al. (2000), identifies the structure underneath student engagement. Thirty-one out of forty-four students participated in the online survey. The results indicated that students value the teaching and the cognitive presences, of the CoI framework, equally high, and above the social presence. In each presence, we highlight the most valued sub-area. In the teaching presence, the “Design and organization” sub-area ranked the highest scores. The sub-areas “Integration” and “Resolution” were first ranked in the cognitive presence. With respect to the social presence, students scored top the sub-area “Affective expression”. The negative scores are associated with the online communication items. The students do not feel comfortable with online communication and strongly believe this form of communication, or web-based communication, are poor means of social interaction.

The coda of these preliminary results is that students are highly satisfied with the course and related topics in general but consider penurious online or web-based communication for social interaction.

Keywords:

CoI, teaching presence, cognitive presence, social presence, hybrid course, Math.