No abstract

This paper presents an empirical study grounded in the Community of Inquiry framework (Garrison, Anderson, Archer, 2000) and employs quantitative content analysis of student discourse and other artifacts of learning in online courses in an effort to enhance and improve the framework and offer practical implications for online education. As a theoretical framework the purpose of the widely referenced CoI model is to describe, explain, and predict learning in online environments. The current study grows out of an ongoing research agenda to understand student and faculty experiences in emerging technology mediated education systems and to make recommendations for theory and practice. The major question addressed here is whether the CoI model adequately explains effective learner behavior in fully online courses and to articulate a new conceptual element -learning presence. Results indicate that learning presence is evident in more complex learning activities that promote collaboration and is correlated with course grades.Online learning in US higher education has exploded in recent years. Studies by the US Department of Education (Parsad & Lewis, 2008) indicate that online students generated more than 12 million course enrollment in 2007-2008 with nearly thirty percent of American college students enrolled in at least one online course (Allen & Seaman, 2010). For learners who were married with dependent children that percentage rises to one in three (Staklis, 2010). Given that today's growth in distance higher education continues to be driven largely by developments

With more than 4 million students enrolled in online courses in the US alone (Allen & Seaman, 2010), it is now time to inquire into the nature of instructional effort in online environments. Reflecting the community of inquiry (CoI) framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) this paper addresses the following questions: How has instructor teaching presence ) traditionally been viewed by researchers? What does productive instructor effort look like in an entire course, not just the main threaded discussion? Results suggest that conventional research approaches, based on quantitative content analysis, fail to account for the majority of teaching presence behaviors and thus may significantly under represent productive online instructional effort.Keywords: Teaching presence; community of inquiry; higher education; content analysis PurposeOnline learning in higher education continues to grow at a rapid rate. The Department of Education reports that online students generated more than 12 million course enrollments in 2007(Parsad & Lewis, 2008) with more than one in four of all college students enrolled in at least one online course (Allen & Seaman, 2010). It is clear that adequate preparation of instructors who venture into this new mode of teaching and learning is vital to its successful implementation. Given that today's growth in distance higher education continues to be driven largely by developments in asynchronous online learning (Allen & Seaman, 2008;Parsad & Lewis, 2008; U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2008) it is Online Instructional Effort Measured through the Lens of Teaching Presence in the Community of Inquiry Framework: A ReExamination of Measures and Approach Shea, Hayes, and Vickers 128necessary that we focus our attention on models that represent the full range of instructional design, pedagogical, and managerial roles, i.e. activities that encompass the work of the online instructor in predominantly asynchronous environments.Recent meta-analytic and traditional reviews of research indicate that the learning outcomes for online students are at least equivalent (Bernard, Abrami, Lou, Borokhovski, Wade, Wozney, Wallet, et al., 2004;Allen, Bourhis, Burrell, & Mabry, 2002;Tallent-Runnels, Thomas, Lan, Cooper, Ahern, Shaw, et. al., 2006;Zhao, Lei, Yan, Lai, & Tan, 2005) and may be superior to (Means, Toyama, Murphy, Bakia & Jones, 2009) those of classroom students. Means et al. (2009) concluded that the superior performance of online students may be a function of time on task (p. 51). It is clear that the transformation of classroom instruction to online instruction is a timeintensive process for faculty with frequent reports that online teaching requires more time (Dahl, 2003;Dziuban, Shea, & Arbaugh, 2005;Hislop, 2001;Tallent-Runnels et al. 2006) than comparable classroom instruction. One goal of this paper is to understand the nature of this instructional effort as evidenced in full online courses through the conceptual lens of teaching presence ).T...

No abstract