A Sample Researcher Blog

Judging the efficacy of OLEs for supporting social constructivism and communities of inquiry

To set about an examination the author has taken as a guide the framework for research and practice set out by Garrison and Anderson (2003) for achieving a successful community of inquiry composed of "teachers and students transacting with the specific purpose of facilitating, constructing and validating understanding, and of developing capabilities that will lead to further learning" (p. 23). This framework states that three key elements of any community of inquiry are cognitive presence, social presence and teacher presence, and each must be considered when evaluating an e-learning experience.

To apply this model to an OLE, it is necessary to consider to what degree the environment itself, and any inherent principles contained within its design, facilitates or obstructs the development of social, cognitive and teaching presence. As will be argued, the degree to which each of these can be achieved is dependent to a large degree on the communication tools within an OLE.

Social presence: Social presence is defined by Garrison, Anderson and Archer as "the ability of participants in a community of inquiry to project themselves socially and emotionally, as "real" people (i.e. their full personality), through the medium of communication being used" (2000 p. 94). Social presence is perhaps the most obvious of elements to be influenced by the medium through which learners communicate (in this case the OLE).

Cognitive presence: Garrison, Anderson and Archer describe cognitive presence as "the extent to which learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse in a critical community of inquiry" (2001 p. 11) and in essence an OLE could be seen to facilitate this in the degree to which it can support "sustained reflection and discourse" and also through any constraints or opportunities presented by the system which hinder or enable a learner in their attempts to "construct and confirm meaning". In many ways this is the defining element of the educational experience and is impacted on most by the nature of discourse encouraged through an OLE.

Teaching presence: Anderson et al. (2001) view teaching presence as "the design, facilitation and direction of cognitive and social processes for the purpose of realising personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile learning outcomes". In terms of OLE use, this can be assessed by the extent and degree to which the tools available empower the teacher to impact on the learner and learning environment and whether the teacher is able to design, facilitate and direct the learning experience towards "educationally worthwhile learning outcomes".