Here’s a copy of my dissertation:
Maddrell, J. A. (2011). Community of inquiry framework and learning outcomes (Doctoral dissertation). Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA.
I’ve had my dissertation up on my personal website for years. I’ve never taken the time to set up my site to track the “hits” to it, so I must not really care about such things. However, I refer to it all the time. Mainly the lit review and discussion to pull out the references. At that point, I felt I’d done the best synthesis I could of the relevant theory and research on “interaction” as it related to “presence” as defined in the Community of Inquiry (CoI). As others had done before me, I linked the CoI constructs to the interaction types as defined by Moore (1989), namely social presence (learner to learner), teacher presence (learner to instructor), and cognitive presence (learner to content). While I’m glad I devoted my dissertation to the study of the CoI, it’s really “interaction” that is my motivation. I’m of the camp that all three have their place and more of any type is (usually) better. However, the qualifier is that interaction strategies are not created equal (Bernard et al., 2009). For example, asking students to post and reply to 2 others is a pretty lazy way to run a discussion board. It checks the “learner to learner” interaction box, but we need to respond to the calls to better understand the specific strategies that lead to better engagement and … dare I say … learning 🙂
As I continue working on my course starting this term, I’m working through a way to support the interaction types I mentioned. We’re incorporating an individual private reflection journal (learner to content and … to a lesser extent … learner to instructor) and a discussion board (learner to learner), and I’ve talked through ideas with colleagues. I’ve landed on an idea to overlay the two assignments where the “prompts” for each week are similar. Anyone who has taught online knows about the dreaded “me, too” posts in a discussion forum, and my goal is to encourage deep learner to content interaction in the reflection journal that students synthesize and reframe in posts with others in the discussion forum. Or, at least, that’s the plan. More to follow …