An educational community of inquiry is a group of individuals who collaboratively engage in purposeful critical discourse and reflection to construct personal meaning and confirm mutual understanding.
The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework theory, methodology, and instruments were developed during a Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities research funded project entitled “A Study of the Characteristics and Qualities of Text-Based Computer Conferencing for Educational Purposes” project which ran from 1997 to 2001. Central to the original study was the creation of a model of a community of inquiry comprised of three essential elements of an educational experience: Cognitive Presence, Social Presence, and Teaching Presence.
Outcomes of the original project were published in peer-reviewed journals which, in turn, have resulted in hundreds of research studies applying and extending the original CoI theory, method, and instruments. The seminal paper “Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education” (Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 2000) has been cited more than 7000 times (as reported by Google Scholar, July 2021) and provided the foundation for valuable empirical research in learning theory across multiple disciplines and in varied educational settings.
The Community of Inquiry theoretical framework represents a process of creating a deep and meaningful (collaborative-constructivist) learning experience through the development of three interdependent elements: social, cognitive and teaching presence.
The Community of Inquiry survey or questionnaire is a stable instrument that can be used in a variety of studies, including large scale inter-institutional or cross-disciplinary studies.
Shared metacognition (MC) exists at the intersection of the cognitive and teaching presence constructs and goes to the heart of a deep and meaningful educational learning experience. The Shared Metacognition Questionnaire (SMQ) has been developed for the study and practice of shared metacognition in a community of inquiry.
The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework theory, methodology and instruments were developed during a Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities research funded project entitled "A Study of the Characteristics and Qualities of Text-Based Computer Conferencing for Educational Purposes" project which ran from 1997 to 2001. Central to the original study was the creation of a framework of a community of inquiry comprised of three essential elements of an educational experience: cognitive, social and teaching presence.
Outcomes of the original project were published in peer reviewed journals which, in turn, have resulted in hundreds of research studies applying and extending the original CoI theory, method, and instruments. The seminal paper "Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education" (Garrison, Anderson and Archer, 2000) has been cited more than 2800 times (as reported by Google Scholar August 2015) and provided the foundation for valuable empirical research in learning theory across multiple disciplines and in varied educational settings.
In the following interview for the Reflective Teaching in a Digital Age podcast, Dr. Randy Garrison describes the history of the CoI framework, including its role in the thoughtful design of online education, and practical ways of helping students learn through active participation and shared meaning making.
The images below are openly licensed through an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons license and can be used with proper attribution to the Community of Inquiry website. Individual written permission is not required. A typical attribution statement (included within the figure's caption) is:
The Community of Inquiry framework. Image used with permission from the Community of Inquiry website and licensed under the CC-BY-SA International 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). The original image is located at https://www.thecommunityofinquiry.org/coi
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