I love teaching this course
My infographic represents how the three presences; social, cognitive and teaching in the Community of Inquiry (COI) are found in a course I teach called Principles of Project Management. I highlight some of the activities in the course and how they align with presences of the COI model. This course is taught fully online. Students initiate, plan, execute and close out projects in an authentic learning experience.
Cognitive Presence
Anderson (2017) cites Garrison, Anderson & Archer’s work (2010) as stating that the context of education and its artificiality create an absence of interactions demonstrating higher levels of cognitive presence through problem solving. The nature of this course design is students are simulating a project as found in industry. Students are provided templates for project documentation and examples of these from past student work. Each of these documents are problems to resolve in their small groups, requiring decisions and demanding what Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes and Garrison say are “practical applications of knowledge” (Table 3.2, Row 7). The deliverables provide the triggering event each week to facilitate a discussion where students are exploring, integrating and coming to resolution about decisions in their projects (Perry, 1981). Through facilitating these discussions I am working in the role of process leader and learning support as Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes and Garrison advise for online COI to facilitate cognitive presence (2013).
Social Presence
Aligning with the guidelines presented by Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes and Garrison (2013) for social presence I facilitate co-creating guidelines for online work. These are posted in the course space. Online office hours are posted to the class beyond the course schedule. Aligning with Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes and Garrison’s principle of establishing community and cohesion (2013), early in the course, groups are provided a low stakes challenge in a digital escape room which sets the conditions for continual building of their group into a cohesive one that can perform. When the activity is complete I facilitate a reflective conversation on how the groups did, posing questions to them about the behaviours that promoted or declined success of the group.
Teaching Presence
Synchronous sessions are recorded to ensure students can receive the information even if their schedule does not allow them to attend the sessions. Along with the semester long group work the course has individual assignments. Having both the group and individual activities is according to Anderson (2017), “one of the key components of teaching presence” (para.4). Through these sessions I model and guide participants through problems solving, provide constructive feedback and facilitate conversations.
References
Anderson, T. (2017). How Communities of Inquiry Drive Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age. Contact North.
https://teachonline.ca/tools-trends/how-communities-inquiry-drive-teaching-and-learning-digital-age
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), 5-9.
Perry, W. G., Jr. (1981). Cognitive and ethical growth: The making of meaning. In A. W. Chickering, The modern American college (pp. 76–116). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. Athabasca University Press. Chapter 3: Facilitation (pp. 45-61).
https://read.aupress.ca/read/teaching-in-blended-learning-environments/section/43261c4a-6d4c-44cf-8c7f-60bc306eb03a#node-aa8c9908aee0a861a8b916e4e8822c6d29f97844
September 13, 2022 at 5:48 am
Hi Karen,
I like the simplicity of your infographic — your strategies for strengthening each presence are clearly presented. I also appreciate how you integrated this assignment with your experience teaching Project Management. You listed a lot of great tips in general, but the one that particularly caught my attention was the digital escape room challenge. Is this something you do with all your classes? Is it available online, or is this something you created yourself? A digital escape room sounds like a really effective (not to mention fun way) to bring people together to work towards a common goal. Building bonds between participants is extra-important in an online setting, but can be a lot more challenging for various reasons. I wonder, have any of your teams been unsuccessful at this activity? If so, what behaviours were exhibited that prevented their “success”? I bet whatever the outcome of this activity, a lot of meaningful learning and self-reflection would come out of it.
Ashley
September 13, 2022 at 5:48 am
Hi Karen,
I like the simplicity of your infographic — your strategies for strengthening each presence are clearly presented. I also appreciate how you integrated this assignment with your experience teaching Project Management. You listed a lot of great tips in general, but the one that particularly caught my attention was the digital escape room challenge. Is this something you do with all your classes? Is it available online, or is this something you created yourself? A digital escape room sounds like a really effective (not to mention fun way) to bring people together to work towards a common goal. Building bonds between participants is extra-important in an online setting, but can be a lot more challenging for various reasons. I wonder, have any of your teams been unsuccessful at this activity? If so, what behaviours were exhibited that prevented their “success”? I bet whatever the outcome of this activity, a lot of meaningful learning and self-reflection would come out of it.
Ashley
September 15, 2022 at 9:22 am
Hi Karen,
I also appreciate the simplicity and clear layout of your infographic. It would lean very well towards applying to a large variety of environments. I appreciate your insight of social presence and how reflection on their behaviour can be a learning experience! How interesting!
September 15, 2022 at 9:22 am
Hi Karen,
I also appreciate the simplicity and clear layout of your infographic. It would lean very well towards applying to a large variety of environments. I appreciate your insight of social presence and how reflection on their behaviour can be a learning experience! How interesting!
September 18, 2022 at 4:22 pm
Hi Karen,
Your passion for delivering this course and applying strategies to establish the presences are evident here. Just like Ashley, I am fascinated by the digital escape room. Would you elaborate on this? How long does it take? Do the learners need any prior prep? What would be considered successful completion of the activity? Does it engage introverted as well as extroverted learners? Intrigued and interested to hear more!
September 18, 2022 at 4:22 pm
Hi Karen,
Your passion for delivering this course and applying strategies to establish the presences are evident here. Just like Ashley, I am fascinated by the digital escape room. Would you elaborate on this? How long does it take? Do the learners need any prior prep? What would be considered successful completion of the activity? Does it engage introverted as well as extroverted learners? Intrigued and interested to hear more!
September 18, 2022 at 5:10 pm
Some of the scavenger hunt is probably proprietary as I scooped this from a facilitator who I got to work with at the beginning of covid and made a bunch of changes and built off it. It basically works with three technologies. Google slides, zoom and an application called flippity. Each teach gets a google slide deck and a link to flippity. Flippity is a simple app that has a bunch of small digital resources but for the scavenger hunt you use the virtual locks that will open if the teams put in the correct password. They get the clues to guess the correct password from the google slide deck. A very weird thing about the scavenger hunt is you basically set it all up with really good instructions and then you send the students out to break out rooms. While you can go into the break out rooms (and I do jump in and out to start and help them get going) eventually all you need to do is look at the shared slide decks to see if the teams are making progress as they need to manipulate many of the slides to get the clues.
I will post a few photos of the slides I use in a new post in a second here.
September 18, 2022 at 5:10 pm
Some of the scavenger hunt is probably proprietary as I scooped this from a facilitator who I got to work with at the beginning of covid and made a bunch of changes and built off it. It basically works with three technologies. Google slides, zoom and an application called flippity. Each teach gets a google slide deck and a link to flippity. Flippity is a simple app that has a bunch of small digital resources but for the scavenger hunt you use the virtual locks that will open if the teams put in the correct password. They get the clues to guess the correct password from the google slide deck. A very weird thing about the scavenger hunt is you basically set it all up with really good instructions and then you send the students out to break out rooms. While you can go into the break out rooms (and I do jump in and out to start and help them get going) eventually all you need to do is look at the shared slide decks to see if the teams are making progress as they need to manipulate many of the slides to get the clues.
I will post a few photos of the slides I use in a new post in a second here.