Abstract:

Communities of inquiry are online or blended learning environments that provide students with learning support through positive teaching presence (effective pedagogical design and facilitation), social presence (active social interactions), and cognitive presence (engagement in problem-solving, critical thinking, and creation of collective artifacts/products) (Garrison, 2016). In the unprecedented covid-19 pandemic, university teachers are challenged to build such meaningful environments to sustain students’ quality learning, where students are engaged in synchronous and/or asynchronous online learning activities to construct understanding and knowledge collaboratively. Previous research has investigated the interaction among teaching, social, and cognitive presences mainly by using the Community of Inquiry Survey. This chapter reports how the pedagogical design and facilitation of collaborative problem-solving tasks have promoted communities of inquiry among students in two courses of teacher training programmes. By examining samples of students’ group tasks (Lee & Yang, 2020) and peer-group critiques (Malecka, Boud, & Carless, 2020), this chapter will explore how the three presences can be integrated through purposeful pedagogical design and teacher facilitation.

References:
[1] Garrison, D. R. (2016). E-learning in the 21st century: A community of inquiry framework for research and practice (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge.
[2] Lee, W. W. S., & Yang, M. (2020). Effective collaborative learning from Chinese students’ perspective: a qualitative study in a teacher-training course. Teaching in Higher Education, 1-17. doi:10.1080/13562517.2020.1790517
[3] Malecka, B., Boud, D., & Carless, D. (2020). Eliciting, processing and enacting feedback: mechanisms for embedding student feedback literacy within the curriculum. Teaching in Higher Education, 1-15.

Keywords:

Communities of inquiry, online learning, pedagogical design, collaborative learning, problem-solving, university students.