Educational Experience and Instructional Design Effectiveness Within the Community of Inquiry Framework

Abstract

Within its 20 years of development, the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework has become the most widely used theoretical framework in e-learning. It is considered in much of the distance education literature to be a robust collaborative-constructivist process model that uses three essential elements to interpret educational experience: cognitive presence, teaching presence, and social presence. Widespread use of the CoI framework has resulted in several criticisms, such as having no guidelines for implementation, no incorporation of assessment and evaluation metrics, and no widespread consensus on the current model’s ability to represent all the contributing factors that promote a positive educational experience. However, there is an opportunity to overcome these shortcomings, some of which may exist, and to use the CoI’s extraordinary strength in creating a positive education experience, by adding instructional design effectiveness. The purpose of this combination of a literature review and opinion is to present the CoI framework and its major controversies to shine a light on its importance as one approach to designing critical parts of e-learning. Additionally, given the CoI’s purpose of creating a positive educational experience, this paper argues to make explicit to instructional designers and instructors the need to address using the CoI framework within an effective overall design.

Mediating Open & Distance e-Learning in the Advent of Global Crises

“…As much as there has been an increase in the popularity of adaptive learning technology/mobile learning, however, literature suggests that extensive implementation still remains a challenge for learning environments (McCullough, Patrick and Boni 2022). This position is shared by other studies (Martin, Bollinger and Flowers 2021;Wilson and Berge 2023) regarding e-learning isntructional design-evaluationassessment, educational experiences and effectiveness. The author considers these elearning research critiques pertinent in HE contexts and especially Unisa as an ODeL environment.…”

“…Therefore, there is a need for a deeper understanding of what access entails towards understanding the challenges that students encounter. Latest research by Wilson and Berge (2023) posits that educational e-learning experience should encompass three elements, namely, cognitive presence, teaching presence, and social presence. These are crucial concepts delineating psychological imperatives for effective and optimal e-learning, especially for students with disabilities for inclusivity in the community (social-collaborative) learning process.…”