CRITICAL ELEMENTS PERCEIVED BY ONLINE DOCTORAL STUDENTS THAT ENABLE FORMATION OF A COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY

This paper will present a case study research work aimed at investigating Professional Doctorate of Higher Education students’ sense of membership to an online learning community. This programme attracts students from all over the world who interact in asynchronous virtual learning environment. Eight out of seventeen students in a cohort volunteered to participate in the in-depth unstructured interviews. Using the Community of Inquiry model (Garrison & Anderson, 2003) we discovered that a majority of the students did not feel their cohort resembled an authentic online learning community. We found that teaching presence was predominant over the social and cognitive aspects of the community. Based on students’ interview responses, we identified six elements that enable online community formation namely: cultural sensitivity; social and cognitive presence; sense of connectedness; online visibility; motivation and tutorship. In this paper we will explore all of these 6 aspects while making linkages with the interview research findings. In conclusion social presence was a key missed element in the formation of the online community although students considered it as a key element while learning online. Hence, the sense of connectedness, motivation and the tutor’s presence become very important enablers in our research and as such they likely be the subject of further investigation in the future.