Learning presence as a moderator in the community of inquiry model

This study of over 2000 US college students examines the Community of Inquiry framework (CoI) in its capacity to describe and explain differences in learning outcomes in hybrid and fully online learning environments. We hypothesize that the CoI model's theoretical constructs of presence reflect educational effectiveness in a variety of environments, and that online learner self-regulation, a construct that we label “learning presence” moderates relationships of the other components within the CoI model. Consistent with previous research (e.g., Means, Toyama, Murphy, Bakia, & Jones, 2009; Shea & Bidjerano, 2011) we found evidence that students in online and blended courses rank the modalities differently with regard to quality of teaching, social, and cognitive presence. Differences in help seeking behavior, an important component of self-regulated learning, were found as well. In addition, results suggest teaching presence and social presence have a differential effect on cognitive presence, depending upon learner's online self-regulatory cognitions and behaviors, i.e. their learning presence. These results also suggest a compensation effect in which greater self-regulation is required to attain cognitive presence in the absence of sufficient teaching and social presence. Recommendations for future research and practice are included.     

The effects of video on cognitive load and social presence in multimedia-learning

Two studies examined the use of video in multimedia learning environments. In Study 1, participants (N = 26) viewed one of two versions of a computer-based multimedia presentation: video, which included a video of a lecture with synchronized slides, or no video, which included the slides but only an audio narration of the lecture. Learning, cognitive load and social presence were assessed, but a significant difference was found only for cognitive load, with video experiencing greater cognitive load, t (24) = 2.45, p < .05. In Study 2, students (N = 25) were randomly assigned to either video or no video condition. Background knowledge and visual/verbal learning preference were assessed before viewing the presentation, and learning, cognitive load, and social presence were assessed after viewing. No significant differences were found for learning or social presence. However, a significant visual/verbal learning preference by condition interaction was found for cognitive load, F (1,21) = 4.51, p < .05: low visual-preference students experienced greater cognitive load in the video condition, while high visual-preference students experienced greater cognitive load in the no video condition.     

Examining online teaching,cognitive, and social presence for adult students

Drawing on the Community of Inquiry model (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000), this mixed-method case study examined the nature and interactions of teaching, cognitive, and social presence created by online instructors and adult students in diverse course contexts. The study results indicated online instructional design and teaching elements that are crucial prerequisites for a successful online higher educational experience for adult students. The study also informed e-learning designers on the relations between online teaching, cognitive, and social presence.     

A closer look on social presence as a causing factor in computer-mediated collaboration

So far, research in computer-mediated collaboration has investigated various factors influencing the amount of social presence experienced in online settings. This experimental study broadens the perspective and investigates social presence as a causing factor on participants’ perception on task, medium and collaboration. Therefore an experiment with between subject design was conducted, with manipulation of three different levels of social presence: Full (f2f), medium online and low social presence (each n = 20). Participants had to solve an online puzzle in dyads.Findings mainly confirm a favourable influence of social presence on the perception of task and collaboration. Additionally, this study supports the importance of considering the reciprocal nature of social presence.     

Enhancing community of inquiry and reflective thinking skills of undergraduates through using learning analytics-based process feedback

This research aims to investigate into the effect of using learning analytics (LA)-based process feedback on students' perceptions of community of inquiry (teaching, social and cognitive presence) and their reflective thinking skills. By using a mixed-method research approach (QUAN + qual), this study was conducted as an experimental design with the pretest–posttest control group. A total of 104 university students who were randomly assigned to the experiment group (EG) and control group (CG) were recruited in this study. The procedure was conducted within the scope of the computing course based on the flipped classroom (FC) model. While the participants in the EG received LA-based process feedback which shows their LA results in a weekly manner, those in the CG did not get any LA-based process feedback. The data were collected through the Community of Inquiry Scale, the Reflective Thinking Scale and a semi-structured student opinion form. The findings indicated that sending feedback including the students' LA results had a statistically significant effect on the students' perceptions of community of inquiry and reflective thinking skills. Based on the findings of the study, several recommendations for teachers, instructional designers and researchers have been made.     

Online social networks: Why do students use facebook?

The growth and popularity of online social networks has created a new world of collaboration and communication. More than a billion individuals around the world are connected and networked together to create, collaborate, and contribute their knowledge and wisdom. Despite the importance of online social networks, there is relatively little theory-driven empirical research available to address this new type of communication and interaction phenomena. In this paper, we explored the factors that drive students to use online social networks (e.g., Facebook). Specifically, we conceptualized the use of online social networks as intentional social action and we examined the relative impact of social influence, social presence, and the five key values from the uses and gratification paradigm on We-Intention to use online social networks. An empirical study of Facebook users (n = 182) revealed that We-Intention to use online social networks is strongly determined by social presence. Among the five values, social related factors had the most significant impact on the intention to use. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Access,utility, imperfection: The impact of videoconferencing on perceptions of social presence

The intent of the research study was to identify relationships between the use of videoconferencing in meetings and what perceptions of social presence may exist related to age, gender, and usage compared to face-to-face meetings. Employees from a large Midwestern University Information Technology division who utilize videoconferencing to facilitate meetings as an alternative to face-to-face meetings were surveyed to assess experiences, perceptions, and satisfaction. Female and male employees (N = 157), ranging in age from 18 to over 50 years of age, provided the frequency of usage, and responded to questions related to perceptions of social presence. Quantitative analysis of the resulting data supported the hypothesis that one of the independent variables, gender, had a positive impact on perceptions of social presence. Brief interviews further elucidated the quantitative findings. While videoconferencing seems to have drawbacks, accessibility, flexibility, and utility are important aspects that are clear from participants’ perceptions of videoconferencing.     

Social presence in online discussions as a process predictor of academic performance

With the steady development of online education and online learning environments, possibilities to support social interactions between students have advanced significantly. This study examined the relationship between indicators of social presence and academic performance. Social presence is defined as students' ability to engage socially with an online learning community. The results of a multiple regression analysis showed that certain indicators of social presence were significant predictors of final grades in a master's level computer science online course. Moreover, the study also revealed that teaching presence moderated the association between social presence and academic performance, indicating that a course design that increased the level of meaningful interactions between students had a significant impact on the development of social presence, and thus could positively affect students' academic performance. This is especially important in situations when discussions are introduced to promote the development of learning outcomes assessed in courses. Another implication of our results is that indicators of social presence can be used for early detection of students at risk of failing a course. Findings inform research and practice in the emerging field of learning analytics by prompting the opportunities to offer actionable insights into the reasons why certain students are lagging behind.     

Do zoom meetings really help? A comparative analysis of synchronous and asynchronous online learning during Covid-19 pandemic

Background

Online learning and teaching were globally popularized due to the impact of Covid-19. The pandemic has made both synchronous and asynchronous online learning inevitable in regions privileged with the technological affordance.

Aims

This study was designed to examine and compare the effectiveness of both learning modes through the Community of Inquiry framework.

Materials & Methods

Comparative analyses on a sample of N = 170 undergraduate students who took both synchronous and asynchronous online courses in Spring 2021.

Results

The paired-sample T-tests results indicated a significant difference in social presence, cognitive presence and self-evaluated performance.

Discussion & Conclusion

Teaching presence significantly influenced social presence and cognitive presence in both learning modes. However, under synchronous learning mode, social presence significantly impacted self-evaluation, grades and school identification. While social presence only influenced school identification under asynchronous learning mode. Theoretical and practical implications were also included.     

Characterizing communication networks in a web-based classroom: Cognitive styles and linguistic behavior of self-organizing groups in online discussions

In this study, we explore the cognitive style profiles and linguistic patterns of self-organizing groups within a web-based graduate education course to determine how cognitive preferences and individual behaviors influence the patterns of information exchange and the formation of communication hierarchies in an online classroom. Network analysis was performed on communication data collected from 1131 student messages posted in 19 asynchronous online discussion forums to determine centrality, clique membership, and core-periphery structure in the communication networks. The social network data were examined in relation to the students' cognitive style profiles, which were assessed using the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI) (32 and 33). The cognitive style composition of small cliques (dyadic and triadic) was found to be highly heterogeneous, often with large cognitive gaps between clique members, which suggests that web-based environments may mask cognitive style differences that have been shown to create conflict in face-to-face interactions. In addition, the cognitive style mean of the students in the core of the network was found to be significantly more adaptive than that of the periphery group. To further characterize the nature of the communicative interactions, automated linguistic analysis was used to analyze the students' writing samples. Interestingly, students in the core of the social network demonstrated a significantly higher usage of several language features associated with individuals who actively promote enhanced group performance and cohesion. For our sample, the linguistic behaviors of students in the core of the social network, coupled with their more adaptive cognitive style preferences, suggest that these students may inherently place greater value on fostering group cohesion than those in the periphery.     

Caregiving role in human–robot interaction: A study of the mediating effects of perceived benefit and social presence

This study investigates whether assigning a caregiving role to a robot or to its human interactant has psychological effects on the quality of human–robot interaction (HRI). College students interacted with a social robot in a between-subjects experiment (N = 60) with two manipulated conditions: one where the robot played the role of an ophthalmologist (with participants serving as patients) and one where participants played the role of the ophthalmologist (with the robot serving as the patient). Results suggest that being a recipient of caregiving acts leads users to form more positive perceptions of the robot than being an ostensible caregiver to the robot. Results also indicate that perceived benefit of being in a relationship with the robot mediates the effects of the caregiving role on relationship satisfaction with—and trust towards—the robot while feelings of social presence mediate the effects on humanlike-ness and intelligence of the robot. These findings demonstrate the applicability of the Computers Are Social Actors (CASA) paradigm to the context of HRI.     

Community of inquiry as a theoretical framework to foster “epistemic engagement” and “cognitive presence” in online education

In this paper, several recent theoretical conceptions of technology-mediated education are examined and a study of 2159 online learners is presented. The study validates an instrument designed to measure teaching, social, and cognitive presence indicative of a community of learners within the community of inquiry (CoI) framework [Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2, 1–19; Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2001). Critical thinking, cognitive presence, and computer conferencing in distance education. American Journal of Distance Education, 15(1), 7–23]. Results indicate that the survey items cohere into interpretable factors that represent the intended constructs. Further it was determined through structural equation modeling that 70% of the variance in the online students’ levels of cognitive presence, a multivariate measure of learning, can be modeled based on their reports of their instructors’ skills in fostering teaching presence and their own abilities to establish a sense of social presence. Additional analysis identifies more details of the relationship between learner understandings of teaching and social presence and its impact on their cognitive presence. Implications for online teaching, policy, and faculty development are discussed.     

Towards an analysis framework for investigating students' engagement and learning in educational blogs

Educational blogs are currently gaining in popularity in schools and higher education institutions, and they are widely promoted as collaborative tools supporting students' active learning. However, literature review on educational blogging revealed a lack of a complete and consistent framework for studying and assessing students' engagement and the impact of blogging on students' learning. This study reports on the application of an analysis framework for evaluating blogging learning activities, based on two well‐documented models, those of Community of Inquiry (CoI) and Social Network Analysis. The framework proposed is examined through an empirical study involving 21 K‐9 students, coming from two classes, in Greece. This investigation shed light into the different ways of students' engagement in a blog‐based project, namely their social and cognitive presence that supported the development of a CoI and learning. The results suggest that the students, through their different roles in the blog, achieved higher thinking and cognitive levels.     

A note on maximizing the spread of influence in social networks

We consider the spread maximization problem that was defined by Domingos and Richardson (2001, 2002) [7] and [22]. In this problem, we are given a social network represented as a graph and are required to find the set of the most “influential” individuals that by introducing them with a new technology, we maximize the expected number of individuals in the network, later in time, that adopt the new technology. This problem has applications in viral marketing, where a company may wish to spread the rumor of a new product via the most influential individuals in popular social networks such as Myspace and Blogsphere.The spread maximization problem was recently studied in several models of social networks (Kempe et al. (2003, 2005) [14] and [15], Mossel and Roch (2007) [20]). In this short paper we study this problem in the context of the well studied probabilistic voter model. We provide very simple and efficient algorithms for solving this problem. An interesting special case of our result is that the most natural heuristic solution, which picks the nodes in the network with the highest degree, is indeed the optimal solution.     

The gorilla in the room: The impacts of video-game play on visual attention

Early studies of visual attention noted a phenomenon termed ‘inattention blindness’ – the inability of participants to see clear stimuli enter the visual field when attending to something else in that field – and sought to expand the understanding of the phenomenon (,  and ). Other research has focused on the changes to the human brain and cognitive functions as a result of video game play, both in positive and negative contexts (Howard-Jones, Ott, van Leeuwen, and De Smedt (2010)). This quasi-experimental study sought to corroborate some of the findings that tie together these seemingly disparate lines of research, adapting the methodology of the most cited inattention blindness experiment (Simons & Chabris, 1999).     

Perceived stress,sensation seeking,and college students’ abuse of the Internet

College students (n = 140) were examined to test whether sensation seeking and perceived stress would predict abuse of the Internet. Previous studies have found that disinhibition, boredom susceptibility, and total sensation seeking scores were related to Internet abuse ( 9 and 30). Because stress has been documented to have a negative effect on students ( Pierceall & Keim, 2007), and may be linked to Internet use ( Lavoie & Pychyl, 2001), it was tested as a possible predictor of Internet abuse. This study also analyzed abuse of the Internet for sexual purposes, because sexuality is prevalent online, and college students are in an age of sexual exploration. Results of stepwise regression analyses revealed that disinhibition and total perceived stress were predictive of Internet abuse for sexual purposes, and perceived hopelessness and boredom susceptibility were predictive of Internet abuse for non-sexual purposes. Implications for students and Internet abuse are discussed.