I think it is safe to say that the general perception of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework is that it is specific to an online or at best blended learning environment. The reality is, however, that the CoI framework is grounded in the higher education literature and was justified as being consistent with a traditional higher education experience. In the seminal article that introduced the CoI framework (Garrison, Anderson and Archer, 2000) we noted the generic nature of the framework; notwithstanding we were using it to guide us in designing collaborative and constructivist online learning experiences. The latent nature of this important characteristic in our publications has largely limited the generalization and adoption of the CoI framework to broader constructivist educational contexts. As the CoI framework became more prominent in designing and studying online learning, I did make modest efforts to emphasize that based on its theoretical foundation, it is a generic framework. Regardless, the reality is that the CoI framework has been shown to provide order and insight into the essence of deep and meaningful constructivist educational experiences across contexts and modes of communication.

As a part of this doctoral thesis students’ teaching presence were studied. The purpose of the thesis has been to explore how students support their own and other students' process of inquiry while engaging in online tutoring sessions, as well as to study how their support can be connected to students’ expressions of teaching presence.

In order to study students’ interactions, chat messages were collected from an online text-based chat system. The method of transcript analysis from the Relationship of Inquiry (RoI) framework, the coding scheme developed in the frame of this thesis, was used to analyze the data. The RoI framework is adapted from the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, adjusted for the case of only one student and one teacher, such as tutoring sessions where the student and the tutor are encouraged to create a relationship of inquiry. The RoI framework adopted the three presences from the CoI framework, but also added the fourth element emotional presence. Using the developed RoI coding scheme students’ messages was analyzed, with focus on students’ expressions of teaching presence. Through analysis of these expressions, students’ support of their own and other students’ process of inquiry, as well as connections towards metacognitive development, may be found.
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