The introduction COI framework

Initially, the conception of “community of learners” has been drawn a considerable attention in higher education which commonly considered community as a significant factor to create a more effective online learning environment by learners’ interactive communication with peers and teachers. With the initiation of such perspective, some researchers started to consider other possible existing elements that might also play a role in the online learning process. Then, the attention has been paid to the cognitive and teaching dimensions with the common recognition that students and teachers are actually the most substantial participants existing in the learning environment. (Garrison & Arbaugh,2007) In the light of the previous ideas and orientations, Garrison and other research fellows (2000) developed a relatively comprehensive theoretical framework of online learning environment called COI framework to guide the practice of online or blended learning. (Figure1)

As shown in figure1, a valuable educational experience is set securely in the COI framework which is consisted of the principle participants in the learning process (i.e., teachers and students). This COI framework assumes that learning always occurs in a community which requires the interaction of three essential factors. (Garrison et el,2000) That is social presence, cognitive presence and teaching presence. Within this critical learning community, individual learners are required to engage cooperatively in a purposeful critical discourse so as to construct their own personal perspective and sustain mutual understanding. (Garrison & Akyol,2013a)

Totally speaking, COI framework is corresponding with constructivist learning approaches in higher level education, being perceived by the domain of online learning and also providing more insights to the research and practices of online learning. (Garrison & Arbaugh,2007)

The elements of COI

The COI framework consists of three main elements: social presence, cognitive presence and teaching presence. In this part, these three elements will be presented in detail so as to explain how do they actually function in the online learning process and how do they operate unitedly appropriately to contribute to the online learning outcomes. In order to explain these elements precisely, a set of indicators will be applied, which are grouped into categories corresponding with the three elements. (Figure2) (Garrison & Arbaugh,2007)

1. Social presence

Social presence in the process of online learning can be defined as the ability of learners in the COI to project themselves socially and emotionally through the communication medium. So far, with growing numbers of related studies, a number of components contributing to the creation of such online learning community have been found. For example, learners’ learning motivation, skills, familiarity, organizational commitment, the communicative activities and the time in using the media all influence the degree of social presence directly. (Garrison et el,2000)

In the light of close relationship between these effective learning factors and social presence, it has been maintained that social presence is a crucial element for the critical community establishment. Indeed, looking into online or blended learning, interactive activities can be considered as a collaborative process in which discourse occur, being practiced by participants and providing critical feedback. In this way, students will interact with others by using mediated tool so as to negotiate, scaffold and confirm the meaning of the learning topics. (Garrison et el,2000)

Further, There are three categories of social presence: affective expression, open communication and group cohesion. (Garrison & Arbaugh,2007)

In terms of affective expression, according to Garrison (2007), affections are indispensably corelate to the learning motivation and persistence which influence a lot on the establishment of COI. Therefore, interlocutors in online communication need to be encouraged to express their emotions for the purpose of bringing people together and facilitating the critical learning process. However, social presence is generally in the form of socio-emotional communication with written language which often weaken or eliminate the visual cues; under such circumstances, learners need to apply the compensating strategies to figure out the latent information. (Garrison et el,2000) In addition, the application of emoticons or some special signs is also an effective way for participants to express affections in online conversations. (Walther,1994)

The second one is open communication, which is described as mutual and respectful interaction, such as mutual awareness and recognition of each other’s contribution in the exchange process. For example, as for mutual awareness, some interactive behaviors such as replying to others by referring explicitly the particular content in their posts will be helpful to build and prolong the relationships, which to some extent affect the learning activities of participants. Additionally, recognitions are also an important support of the development and sustainability of online exchange relationship. By this, it means that the agreement and appreciation of others’ contribution should take place usually to encourage continuable communication. (Garrison et el,2000)

The third indicator is group cohesion. Within critical COI context, it is really necessary to make students involved in various group activities. This is generally explained by the fact that group-based learning activities might be a more motivated learning experience for students to view themselves as a member of the group to further build their participation and share their personal perspectives. (Annand,2011)

To be concluded, social presence is intended to create a supportive exchange learning context by mutual understanding.

2. Cognitive presence

Generally, cognitive presence means that learners shoule be able to explore, construct, resolve and confirm the meaning through critical reflection and discourse within in COI framework. Specifically, it can be understood in a structure of critical thinking which is a systematic multi-phased cognitive process structure, starting with an activated factor, followed by a string of thinking activities such as perception, exploration and integration. More specifically, the cognitive presence operationalizes in a practical inquiry model, bringing about mainly four phases or categories: (1). a triggering event: some dissonant issues or problems requiring further inquiry occur; (2). exploration which refers to the further search for more information to solve the dissonant situation so that the clarification and direction could be offered; (3). integration: learners work individually or cooperatively to scaffold the knowledge developed in exploration phase into a more logical idea; (4). the resolution phase indicates the application of newly gained knowledge to the learning contexts. (Figure3) Whether the new learned knowledge is applied or confirmed successfully will influence the continuity of the process of such practical inquiry. (Garrison et el,2001)

3. Teaching presence

As a binding element in COI framework, teaching presence is an essential element in making the balance between social and cognitive factors. (Garrison et el,2000) In other words, with only social interaction and practical cognitive inquiry, it is less likely to achieve significant learning outcomes. Teaching presence is definitely required to provide the clear design, facilitation and direction for the mutual communication and critical self-reflection.

There are three categories of indicators of teaching presence: design & organization, facilitating discourse and direct instruction. (Garrison & Arbaugh,2007)

Firstly, the category of design & organization is actually the instructional management. Garrison et el (2001) illustrated this aspect as the parameters and guidelines of the structure design, scaffolding process, meaningful interaction and effective evaluation in online courses. In detail, it involves the planning issues such as setting curriculum, designing teaching methods and assessment model, applying the learning medium. The second one is facilitating discourse, which is practically the process of constructing the understanding by communication. Obviously, this category is more related to the cooperative community of learners to exchange opinions. (Garrison,2000) The last one is direct instruction fairly connecting to the efficacy of the learning experience which involves the assessment and feedback. In the online learning process, instructors need to present intellectual information, learning activity guidelines, summary and also explanatory feedback to learners in order to make the learners engage well in this learning experience so that the learning outcomes could be maximised. (Garrison,2000)

The relationship between these three elements

Most people maintained that among these three presences, the teaching presence directly influence the balanced effectiveness of social and cognitive presence, further making all these three elements united appropriately so that the educational outcomes could be achieved to the large extent.

Garrison et el (2010) have conducted a research in order to figure out the correlation between these three elements, by which they found a structural model of the relationship between social, cognitive and teaching presence. That is, students’ understanding of teaching presence indeed have a direct and significant effect on the process of cognitive presence; teaching presence is largely connected with the social presence, for example, a variety of the plannings of learning activities in the course require the participants of students; moreover, the exact degree of the establishment of social presence would affect the occurrence and sustainability of the cognitive presence. (Garrison,1997) That is to say, more precisely, if the teaching presence is demonstrated with a high degree of expertise and clear instructions accompanying by active participation and effective interaction, a high-level cognitive presence would be scaffolded which will result in an educational outcome in online learning community. (Garrison et el,2000)

Therefore, taking the particularity of the computer-based learning community (i.e., asynchronous and written language communication) into consideration, a lot of ways regarding to the effective expression of teaching presence in online community have been proposed including the creation of content, guideline and direction of learning, peer learning, facilitation of learning environment and social learning space, the application of a practical moderation style in teaching-learning activities, and the supplement of the online communication in face-to-face sessions. (Murphy,2015; Garrison et el,2000)

Conclusion

In conclusion, this essay primarily focuses on the COI model within the online or blended learning. In particular, the three elements - social, cognitive and teaching presence - of the framework are illustrated, and the relations between these elements are analyzed. With these, further, the practicability of such community framework are briefly evaluated and the significantly positive correlations among these three presences were proved. That is, teaching presence is a facilitating or even determining factor to establish an effective and critical online learning community with the appropriate degree of social and cognitive presence. Importantly, only if all the three elements united properly in the community of inquiry, the ultimate educational purpose will be realized to a large extent.

However, still, there is little exact template or practical guidance for appropriate teaching presence in online or blended learning. The existing research we know now about constructing and facilitating a high-quality text-based online learning community is relatively rough and instinctive. Therefore, much work is still required in terms of the creation, design and implementation of text-based online learning for the meaningful and worthwhile learning outcomes.

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