Using the CoI to Evaluate Different Blended Learning Approaches: Achieving Teaching, Cognitive and Social Presence in Large Postgraduate Online Courses Lynette Nagel Department for Education Innovation University of Pretoria South Africa
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Abstract: Blended learning models differ with respect to delivery modes and the proportions of the courses that are presented online versus in classroom mode. The enormous flexibility in blended delivery allows designers to customise courses for particular contexts and learner characteristics. The Community of Inquiry (CoI) shows where teaching practices support a social constructivist teaching philosophy. In order to improve online and blended learning for post-graduate courses, we used the CoI survey instrument to pinpoint best practices in three post-graduate courses on Research Methodology, delivered with different blended learning methods. The findings showed the strength of supportive documentation in fostering teaching presence, the value of peer review in creating cognitive presence and the value of student-led collaborative projects in establishing social presence. We also discuss the effect of cultural diversity on our blended and online courses.
Introduction Worldwide, online teaching is more common in undergraduate courses (Allen, Seaman, & Garrett, 2007), providing designers with numerous examples of how to redesign classroom-delivered courses successfully for blended or online teaching. For academics who teach post-graduate courses, the road to online teaching is less clear, with numerous challenges. At the University of Pretoria (UP), a traditionally residential university the use of ICT’s for learning is transforming the way we teach, the course curricula and the profile of potential students. Traditional lecture-dominated teaching is giving way to blended learning in many variations. The transformation has been most noticeable in post-graduate courses, partly due to more flexibility in the curricula, the maturity of the students, and the smaller cohorts that allow academics to explore more innovative teaching practices. The convenience of learning from a distance and in their own time literally opens the door to post-graduate students who would not traditionally enrol at this residential university. These “new” students found our university’s post-graduate courses attractive mostly for two reasons: bridging time and distance constraints. They were mostly professionals in full-time employment who are unable to attend classes; while some resided far from this university, often outside the country. African foreigners sought a relevant qualification that will empower them in the workplace. To variants of computer and web literacy, foreign students add to the diversity of cultures, languages, academic background and learning styles. Blended learning provided the means to address such challenges (Picciano, 2009). Our challenge was to identify the interventions and practices that contribute to excellence in courses, in order to improve future online and blended courses in our particular context, as many lecturers are transforming their courses from classroom-based or technology-enhanced contact teaching to blended learning. This research has addressed stated gaps in research in the management education, namely comparing “online and blended management education; further examination of participant characteristics, particularly for instructors; and the influence of institutions located outside North America” (J. B. Arbaugh, Desai, Rau, & Sridhar, 2010, p. 39). As instrument we chose the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) which can be used to design, evaluate and improve e-learning and blended learning in classes with a collaborative, constructivist approach. The CoI is a process model that describes learning as a function of the intersection of three presences: teaching, social and cognitive. We inspected three successful
post-graduate courses delivered in blended learning mode for good teaching practice, and used the CoI survey instrument as gold standard of good e-learning to pinpoint the effects of the teaching practice. We gathered the context of each course from interviews with the lecturers, and triangulated the CoI findings with the qualitative data. The research question we sought to answer is the following: Which instructional design strategies contribute to excellent e-learning in post-graduate courses in our cultural context, as indicated by the CoI?
Literature Blended Learning Blended learning refers to an educational experience created cost effectively using a mix of integrated distance learning technologies such as videoconferencing, e-learning, videos, and CDROM. Typically, the blend will also include traditional face-to-face meetings, classroom activities, print resources, and a variety of instructional strategies such action learning, participatory learning, interactivity, case studies, and more (World Bank Institute)
According to Picciano (2009), blended learning encompasses learning technology in two dimensions: various delivery modes and delivery technologies. It includes multiple modes of delivery in order to accommodate and harness a variety of students’ learning characteristics and preferences. Moving away from predominantly written modes of resource provision, students should have access to richer resources in aural and visual modes (Muteaches, 2011). Blended learning also harnesses the power of the web in delivering all aspects of learning online, including communication. According to the Sloan Consortium (Allen et al., 2007; Picciano, 2009), blended learning also means that some or all of the classroom time is replaced by online activities. One can describe teaching where computer technology provides additional resources and activities but does not replace up to 29% lecturing time, as a supplemental or enhanced model. On the other side, all (or more than 80%) teaching and learning activities can take place online in a fully online course (Allen et al., 2007). According to the Sloan-C report, blended learning represents all combinations of contact and online teaching where at least a part (30 - 79%) of the classroom time is replaced by online teaching (Allen et al., 2007). In the transition from classroom-based to blended and e-learning, it is important to evaluate the quality of blended learning experiences, as the technologies also influence the quality of learning (Ginns & Ellis, 2007). In our case, ICT availability and literacy can either enhance or hinder the e-learning component of blended learning. The pedagogy likewise determines the quality of the learning, if one wishes to reduce lecturing time and enable educational differentiation. Problem-based blended learning with a social constructivist pedagogy has proven suitable (Dalsgaard & Godsk, 2007). Blended learning offers superior opportunities for support, particularly through tutor and peer support activities (Hughes, 2007). A recent metaanalysis confirmed that “Students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-toface instruction… blended conditions often included additional learning time and instructional elements” (Means, Toyama, Murphy, Bakia, & Jones, 2009).
Community of Inquiry (CoI) Since Garrison, Anderson and Archer (2000) first published the COI framework, dozens of studies have adopted, refined, and confirmed the framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2010). In recent years hundreds of studies have validated the COI model as a survey instrument (Ice, 2009), with researchers using it for research, practice and assessing the quality of both online and blended learning environments (Garrison, Cleveland-Innes, & Fung, 2010). The framework comprises three online presences, namely teaching, which signifies direct instruction, support and organization; social, which comprises students’ familiarity and communication with peers and cognitive that indicates the levels of reflective inquiry. The CoI framework requires the interaction of all three presences, while the subject matter, the communication technology and the learners determine the relative importance each presence (Garrison, Anderson, et al., 2010).
Cognitive presence “Cognitive presence describes the extent to which learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse” (Ice & Nagel, 2010). It is based on the Practical Inquiry model learning cycle comprising four phases: triggering event (questioning), exploration, integration (formulating possible solutions), and resolution of the problem (Garrison, Anderson, et al., 2010). Early studies indicated that students often did not proceed further than the exploratory phases when the design of the courses did not require them to. Online discussions that foster critical thinking can raise cognitive presence (Richardson & Ice, 2010). There are also significant differences in cognitive presence between disciplines, suggesting the possibility that “the CoI framework may be more applicable to applied disciplines than pure disciplines” (J. B. Arbaugh, Bangert, & Cleveland-Innes, 2010, p. 7).
Social presence Social presence reflects an affective dimension of participants feeling socially and emotionally connected to each other, brought about by open communication, group cohesion and a shared identity. It expresses the extent to which others taking part in class communication are perceived as “real” (Ice & Nagel, 2010). Students who do not feel connected to their class, often feel isolated, and often drop the course. The constructs that contribute to this presence are: personal, affective expression, openness in communication and group cohesion. There is a strong relationship between social presence and satisfaction with online courses (Richardson & Swan, 2003). Social presence contributes to cognitive presence and learning only when it is directed towards learning outcomes, and not by itself (Garrison et al., 2000).
Teaching presence Teaching presence is defined as the “design, facilitation, and direction of cognitive and social processes for the realization of meaningful learning” (Ice & Nagel, 2010, p. 3). The core roles of the online instructor reflect in teaching presence and are instrumental in developing and maintaining online learning communities (Garrison, Cleveland-Innes, et al., 2010). Initial studies of the CoI depended on computer mediated communication in discussions using a listserv, learning management system of other forum where students and teacher communicated online, sharing ideas and learning from each other (Garrison et al., 2000). The forum was also used to distribute learning resources in an organised way that contributed to learning. Students' sense of learning community depend on effective instructional design, directed facilitation and direction of cognitive and social processes on the part of course instructors (Shea, Li, & Pickett, 2006). Both teaching and social presence influence cognitive presence, while teaching presence is shown to influence social presence (Garrison, Cleveland-Innes, et al., 2010). Evaluating teaching presence reveals areas where facilitators and instructors might improve the design of a course or direct more attention (Díaz, Swan, Ice, & Kupczynski, 2010). The original articles and much of the subsequent research are available on a website maintained by Randy Garrison (Garrison). In a previous study, we found that teaching presence in a very large online class resulted from provision of comprehensive supportive documentation in the online environment that pre-empted possible problems that online students might encounter (Nagel & Kotzé, 2010). This teaching presence developed without students participating in online discussions, or the facilitator moderating those discussions.
Methodology We used a mixed methodology approach (Sharp & Frechtling, 1997), consisting of qualitative analysis of online course documents and transcripts of interviews conducted with the responsible lecturers. The student replies to the CoI survey instrument were quantitatively analysed. Findings from the different approaches were then compared and crystallised (Tobin & Begley, 2004). The CoI survey consists of 34 items that cover the different components that make up the three presences of the CoI framework (J B Arbaugh et al., 2008). Replies were captured using a 5 point likert-style scale, with responses of 1 representing “strongly disagree” to 5: “strongly agree”. This survey, with a few
additional items for demographic data, was deployed as an online survey in the learning management system during the last weeks of each course, while students were submitting their final essays. We calculated mean scores for each of the items, constructs and presences in the survey per course, and calculated the statistical significance of any differences. The qualitative component consisted of an instructional designer analysing the primary documents on each course LMS site using as framework the design principles for elearning based on learning tasks, learning resources and learning supports (Oliver & Herrington, 2002), in order to compare the resources and activities that were available in each course. A summary of the most salient findings from the meta-analysis are given in the comments column in table 1. In depth interviews with each lecturer gave insight into the rationale and methods of teaching each course. Using the CoI framework, we then matched particular findings in the survey results with course design features and teaching practices in each course, in order to identify which were perceived as contributing to teaching, social or cognitive presence in those courses, and could be used to good effect in other courses that rely on a blended delivery.
Context of the courses This investigation focuses on three exemplary post-graduate courses on research methodology: one in Engineering Management and two in the faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. While course objectives were mostly similar, different student profiles had to be taken into account. The same lecturer taught both the courses in the Economics faculty, which prepared students to write an academic research essay. The Engineering Management course, which also culminated in a research essay, followed a more hands-on approach and integrated the research with the theory, spanning most of the academic year. All three courses followed their own blended learning strategy concerning contact sessions, and all used the LMS (WebCT Vista) for online course activities. Economics and Management Sciences (EMS) Masters and PhD Students could enrol for a Masters or PhD in the EMS faculty at UP in diverse departments. A few years ago the Department of Communication and Marketing instituted a formal course in research methodology to ease the load of individually coaching growing numbers of post-graduate students in that department. This course was designed and delivered fully online because the students were all in full-time employment. Due to the enormous popularity of this new delivery mode, annual enrolments continued to increase up to 200+, as other departments also sent their students to this course (Nagel & Kotzé, 2010). For the masters and particularly the doctoral students, the objective was to produce a research proposal that reflects originality and novel applicability, built on a sound basis of academic writing and research skills. These students were more diverse as well as older (between 25 and 50 years old) than the honours students (younger than 25), all in full-time employment, and many resided far from the University, with a few from other African countries or further abroad. Many had completed previous qualifications at other universities. Most students were new to the LMS, and some rural, foreign students had limited internet access (Nagel & Kotzé, 2011). An optional half-day contact support session in the computer laboratory at the outset was well-attended, particularly by students of African culture who had not experienced our online environment before. In the contact session, those students also chose to work through the tasks in groups. In order to accommodate limited ICT skills, the course contained extensive supportive documentation. To further ameliorate poor bandwidth challenges, instructions and feedback were emailed as a weekly digest to all participants. EMS Honours Students continued with honours studies at UP directly after completing their B Com degree without first working. They were therefore relatively homogenous in terms of age and academic background. Campus was accessible for these students, and while themajority were not employed, weekly class attendance was no barrier, allowing a true blended learning delivery (Picciano, 2009), where a sizable portion of class time was replaced by online activities. For this generation, the LMS was familiar territory as was everything else on the web. The outcome of the honours course was to master the processes of academic writing and research, and was less stringent on originality and applicability than the Masters course. Both EMS courses culminated in a
research proposal after six months. Students practiced recursive writing in both courses, with successive drafts of the research proposal submitted in stages. Engineering Management The Master’s degree in Engineering, Project and Technology Management in the School of Engineering Management stretched over two academic years and entailed discipline-specific teaching that included a strong focus on both people and process management skills. The delivery of this programme drew strongly upon the students’ work environment, reminiscent of the blended model used by Shell at the University of Twente. Likewise it “ involved blends of different types of learning activities, predominately carried out in the workplace, reported upon and shared with fellow classmates via interactions in a Web-based learning management system” (Collis, Bianco, & Cooke, 2003). Students in this programme were professional engineers who had been working in industry for some time; the programme required them to integrate their particular workplace context and apply the knowledge there. The programme also developed affective outcomes aimed at changing the behaviour of the engineers so as to become efficient managers. The research module was taught by a team of lecturers, anchored by one online environment. Students developed their own research topics for this capstone project to apply in their professional environment; using workplace-based information. During the course of the programme, students also produced a mini-dissertation based on research initiated in this course. Though having access to technology and internet, this group was also unfamiliar with this LMS, and were more inclined towards practice than theory. This paper used data from the research project phase of 10 months. It consisted of iterative writing submitted in 7 steps, including a final research report, research article and a group presentation at a symposium. The blended learning model consisted of online distance learning with 3 contact opportunities: a half-day orientation session at the beginning of the programme; a compulsory 2.5 day contact session halfway through the semester and the symposium close to the end. Students were required to work as teams in a community to produce the symposium projects. For students residing or working in African and other countries this presented a challenge. The course had to provide accessible online study material, and accommodate students who had limited opportunities to attend contact sessions, resulting in a true blended learning design that replaced most of the contact time with online and self-directed group work (Allen et al., 2007).
Results and Discussion Comparison of blended and online learning The researcher conducted interviews with the lecturers and scrutinised the online components of the courses in the LMS, conducting a comparative analysis of the instructional design of the relevant courses, as planned and implemented by the lecturers themselves. The nature of the blended learning and use of the LMS in all three courses are given in table 1. Because all three were exemplary courses with excellent completion rates, the similarities between the courses indicated best practice in dealing with the subject and context. The comments column shows a summary of the main aspects of the differences and similarities between the courses. EMS Honours 82
EMS Masters, PhD 103
Engineering Masters 260
Comments Large classes
Weekly
Initial half day
Contact activities
Library orientation, individual consultation on statistics use
Library orientation, LMS orientation
Initial half day, 2.5 days later in semester, symposium Library orientation, LMS orientation, individual personality and thinking style analyses
Content, reading material
Study guide, online documentation, 4 prescribed articles
Study guide, online documentation, articles, additional references
Blended learning with variable contact time Library orientation f2f and online, LMS orientation for new students f2f and online Core reading material, resources supplied online in all
Number of students Contact sessions
Study guide, online documentation.
EMS Honours
Templates
General support
Ethics committee application, informed consent form, example questionnaire, dataset, proposal, article Reference guides, Turnitin resources, SPSS instructions
EMS Masters, PhD depending on chosen methodology. 2 Text books Ethics committee application, cover page, topic statement, draft proposal (1st , 2nd and 3rd drafts)
Engineering Masters 2 Text books, 6 additional articles
Comments courses, additional hard-copy resources.
Ethics committee application, proposal, research article, report, symposium presentation
Templates supplied for submission of documents
Reference guide, detailed LMS use instructions, Turnitin resources, netiquette guide 7 groups student lounges in LMS Discussions. Lecturer replies in email
Reference guide, tips, online Library information
Support with referencing in all, otherwise tailored to context No structured, moderated discussions, use LMS, email or contact communication Different approaches to topic choice Relevant examples in all courses
Discussions
In-class collaborative activities; none in LMS
Choice of research topic Examples
List provided by Department Examples of proposals, survey, content analysis.
Own choice
Own, workplace situated
Examples of topic statements and proposals
Support for dissertation writing
Self-correcting writing templates= document checker, peer review with feedback. Draft proposals: 1 peer review and evaluation (3 review submissions), final proposal, Turnitin used for submission (4 stage submission) 5 online quizzes
Self-correcting writing templates=document checker.
Examples of good and bad dissertations, projects, PowerPoint presentations Rubric with 6 criteria Multiple stage submission with feedback. Peer feedback at contact sessions Draft proposal, chapters 1-4, draft report, draft article, final report, final article (6 submissions in all)
Assignments
Quizzes
Draft proposals: 2 rounds of peer review and evaluation (3 or 6 review submissions), final proposal, Turnitin used for submission. 2 online quizzes
LMS Discussions: 74 messages with 26 lecturer replies
6 online quizzes, Research idea
Writing format support, either automated or via peers Recursive writing with 4-6 submissions in all courses; Written peer feedback and plagiarism checking in EMS Online quizzes to pace students through compulsory reading.
Table 1: Blended learning components in courses Table 1 shows that, using the Picciano (2009) classification, the courses used different online and blended learning models, from a strong face-to-face component (EMS honours) to fully online (EMS masters). The notable similarities between the courses were: face-to-face orientation to use the library and LMS for those who were unfamiliar with the system; online support for those facilities, online reading resources to supplement hard copy material; templates, rubrics and and examples to help with writing process, particularly referencing; submission in stages followed by some form of feedback. Notably absent from all courses were structured moderated discussions, according to the lecturers, due to class sizes greatly exceeding 25 which is the norm for online discussions, and no departments had sufficient teaching staff to facilitate online discussions in groups. In spite of the absence of moderated online discussions, all courses provided ample support for course activities in other forms that did not necessarily involve lecturer intervention. In the two EMS courses, students had additional writing support in the form of a document checking program that identified and corrected an all-encompassing list of common writing, formatting and referencing errors; those students also had opportunity to engage in online peer review consisting of formative feedback. These courses also provided access to anti-plagiarism software to support with referencing techniques and paraphrasing. One important
difference between courses was the approaches to assigning research topics: in the honours class topics were allocated to each student, whereas Masters and PhD students developed their own topics according to their research and work interest. Community of Inquiry findings Figure 1 shows the average values of each of the three presences as calculated from the CoI survey completed by students in each of the three post-graduate courses. We present the survey results per presence, rather than a more granular presentation of scores per item / construct.
5 4.5 4
4.3
4.2 3.7
4
3.8
4.0
4.1 3.8
3.5
3.5
Teaching presence
3 2.5
Social presence
2
Cognitive presence
1.5 1 0.5 0 EMS hons
EMS M
Eng
Figure 1: Average CoI presences in three courses All three courses showed very high teaching presence for such large classes (fig 1), in spite of the absence of online discussions, seemingly an anomaly. Facilitator-moderated discussions usually provide the backbone of online courses where the teaching presence results from provision of direction and facilitation from the instructor, aided by course design (Shea et al., 2006). The nature of the drivers of the teaching presence is a contentious topic, as apparently “students often do not differentiate between design and direction” (Garrison, Anderson, et al., 2010, p. 7). In our cases it seems that, considering the limited individual online facilitation and direction, the teaching presence emanated more strongly from the course design. The highest average teaching presence (4.3) and the highest score for course design (4,67) was found in the EMS Masters, the fully online course where, of the three courses, the most extensive supportive online documentation and activities were present (table 1), strongly suggesting a connection. These documents and examples would preempt most of the questions students might ask, bypassing the need for on-going facilitation and direction. It also reinforced the design principle that online courses should have a clear and well-organised interface and that students should not get bogged down in technical difficulties (Shea et al., 2006; Swan, 2003). During the preparation of their projects in both EMS courses, online peer review further provided much needed individual feedback as well as examples to study (Nagel & Kotzé, 2010), further strengthening teaching and cognitive presences. What these results showed, was that teaching presence could be designed into the courses beforehand without the “teacher” interacting with students individually as is only possible in much smaller online classes. Social presence was the weakest presence in all three classes, reflecting the lack of facilitated online discussions, preventing students from forming distinct impressions of classmates or developing affective relationships. The lowest social presence in the fully online EMS Masters course reflects the lack of face-toface interaction compared to the two others. Incidental contact during lectures (honours class), engendered less social presence than expected. Slightly higher social presence was seen in the Engineering class that worked together on group projects, though even there it remained the weakest presence. Social presence requires deliberate design to that effect, but the practicalities of the class sizes remained an obstacle. In the Engineering class that had sufficient numbers of black African students to separate the scores, their social presence score was significantly higher (average 4.0) than the whites (3.6). This represents a 10.5% difference, which is significant. This high score probably reflect self-initiated contact and collaboration with students of similar
language and culture, as is very common in this cultural group. This trend was already visible during the initial contact sessions, where white students worked individually on their computers, and the blacks tended to team up with others. Literature confirms this observation, as black students in a virtual classroom “place higher emphasis on communal values, which include knowledge that is valued, how learning occurs, and communication patterns of working together for the good of community” (Rovai & Wighting, 2005, p. 108). They note that black students develop a strong sense of community through collaborative tasks, compared to white students who prefer individual assignments. Clearly this aspect needs further investigation in order to inform strategies for development of social presence. Cognitive presence was the strongest of the presences in the engineering class. The resolution construct in the Practical Inquiry model reflects the ownership and the importance a student attaches to solving the problem under investigation. In the courses with cognitive presence higher than 4, the students selected their own research topics that were personally relevant and important to their working environment. The lower cognitive presence in the honours students echoes their relative lack of interest in topics that were provided to them. It seems that constructivist learning principles with a flexible curriculum that encourage students to take a personal interest in their work, improved all phases of the cognitive inquiry cycle, including the formerly perceived problematic resolution phase (Vaughan & Garrison, 2005). Integrating practical problem solving with theoretical solution generation, also seemed to increase cognitive presence.
Conclusions In our context, the design of post-graduate courses had to enable distance students to take courses over a distance, meeting the following challenges: limited opportunity for contact sessions; limited internet or limited ICT skills. Blended learning provided feasible approaches to these difficulties. The features that were common to the three exemplary courses were: using the LMS to provide an abundance of reading, organisational, instructional and supportive material, engaging students with online quizzes, provide structure and feedback to their writing tasks, and implement recursive writing of the course deliverable assignment in multiple stages. We showed that these practices provided a strong design construct in the CoI and therefore contributed towards teaching presence, which was high in all courses. Choosing own research topics and engaging in tasks that are meaningful, interesting and yield applicable outcomes were important to cultivate reflective inquiry as shown in the high cognitive presence particularly in the engineering course. Peer review further contributed to teaching and cognitive presence (Nagel & Kotzé, 2010). The CoI revealed that social presence lagged in all courses, particularly in the fully online course. The amount of contact time influenced the social presence, though not to the anticipated extent. Literature shows that designed online collaborative activities help to develop social presence, the learning community and contribute to meaningful learning (Richardson & Swan, 2003). We also found that absence of online socialisation curtailed the social presence experienced by African students significantly less than for white students. True to their culture (Rovai & Wighting, 2005), and as observed during the minimal contact sessions, they created their own social circles outside the formal structures. The best practice to stimulate social presence in a large online class remains to be developed, taking into account variations in how students from different cultures experience social presence and community, and include all such groups. More research on these aspects is needed, considering the potential burgeoning of e-learning in this subcontinent. Considering the issues singled out for research in management education outside North America (J. B. Arbaugh, Desai, et al., 2010) we attempted to show the importance of certain strategies common to blended and online post-graduate courses, as they apply to participants with particular characteristics. Future research will shed light on the contribution of instructor characteristics to the learning community, as at present, due to the excessive workload, EMS research methodology courses are returning to the home departments. These courses will be using the same basic instructional design, with diverse adaptations to suit the lecturers. How individual interpretations of the current course will influence the presences, will inform design decisions in future.
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Acknowledgements This research was supported by a Research Development Programme grant from the University of Pretoria. The author further wishes to thank the lecturers for permission to use data from their courses.
