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ABOUT THE FRAMEWORK
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY

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.

KEY RESEARCH AREAS

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.

READ ABOUT THE FRAMEWORK AND PRESENCES

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.

READ ABOUT THE SURVEY

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.

READ ABOUT SHARED METACOGNITION
A HISTORY

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.

Reflective Teaching in a Digital Age: Community of Inquiry (CoI) Framework and Online Teaching

RESOURCES FOR STUDENTS AND AUTHORS

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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RECENT COMMENTS

Corna Olivier on Integration of AI, specifically GenAI in the Community of Inquiry
1 month ago
Good morning from sunny South Africa, I’m currently working on my PhD, where I’m exploring the integration of GenAI chatbots within the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework. My goal is to develop a set of guidelines for training chatbots to effectively function as active agents in supporting meaningful ...

D. Randy Garrison on The CoI Community
1 month ago
I see no reason why this would not work. I would encourage you to explore this further. Best, DRG

Joe Gollner on The CoI Community
1 month ago
Hello CoI Community. I am Joe Gollner from beautiful Victoria BC. I am a semi-retired businessman / technology entrepreneur who has somehow come to make postgraduate research in Management, and more specifically Management Education, my twisted version of retirement. In these inquiries, I came upon, and have been ...

Lailaturrahmi on The CoI Community
4 months ago
Hi Marije, I am not sure if this addresses your question, but this tool may help: Teacher Self-Assessment and Exploration Tool: https://read.aupress.ca/read/principles-of-blended-learning/section/2b32aff1-63b8-4b09-9c79-84bc13b61a56 ...

Damilare on The CoI Community
4 months ago
Hello community, I'm Dami, a student of Political Science and International Relations. From Osun State University, Nigeria. I saw this community, because I was in search of a community that would help improve my knowledge, and might get to meet students like me who wants to get better in their various courses and be ...

D. Randy Garrison on The CoI Community
5 months ago
Marije, Not sure I can be of much direct help. There is considerable research on faculty development if that would help. There is extensive research where faculty have used the CoI framework to design online learning experiences. Finally, I am not clear as to your question regarding different courses. the framework ...

Marije Lesterhuis on The CoI Community
5 months ago
Hey all, I am an assistant professor at the University Medical Centre Utrecht, the Netherlands. I am interested in the framework, as my PhD student in Kenya is using it in his PhD research. He is looking into online and blended learning. We've found already some work within medical education, but have not found much ...

D. Randy Garrison on Can I use the three elements of the CoI as the theoretical framework to support the research on professional learning community and 21st-century teaching among teachers?
9 months ago
Most definitely. In fact, we used the CoI framework for professional development when Dr. Norm Vaughan did his doctorate on the subject. The following will provide an introduction to this work. Vaughan, N., & Garrison, D. R. (2005). Creating cognitive presence in a blended faculty development community. Internet and ...

S. LING PHEY on Can I use the three elements of the CoI as the theoretical framework to support the research on professional learning community and 21st-century teaching among teachers?
9 months ago
Can the three elements of the CoI framework be integrated and applied to support the professional learning community and 21st-century teaching among teachers? From my reading, CoI is more geared toward students' learning, although the teaching presence element focuses on the ...

D. Randy Garrison on Cognitive Presence Update
1 year ago
The easy answer is that they cannot be easily separated; they overlap in the Venn diagram. According to the diagram and theory, each can have differing influence on the educational experience (dependent variable however it is defined). Off the top I suppose that the correlation among the presences will depend on the ...
The Community of Inquiry is a project of Athabasca University, Mount Royal University, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, and the Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, as well as researchers and members of the CoI community.