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Hello Terry,
I have just printed your recent sermon on New Atheism for reading on my evening bus ride home. Looking forward to it. I am writing to ask you about a comment you made at the presentation you gave here at the University of Auckland on 12th Feb this year “What’s the big deal about blended learning”. You mentioned that 70% of MOOCs (was it on Coursera or edEx?) were now being offered “asynchronously” – that is not the term you used but I can’t recall what it was – basically not moderated “live” by the educators/faculty members (due to the cost) while being offered. Can you clarify that for me please? ie which MOOC platform, what the phrase is for that kind of online “teaching” or MOOC “offering” – and a reference for that statistic if you have it? (I am writing a paper about the teaching presence in our first MOOC on introductory statistics offered 2 years ago).
Would be much appreciated, thank you.
Claire
(Learning designer and lecturer at CLeaR, University of Auckland)
Hello Terry,
I am a great fan of your work on CoI and I believe that the more we dive into this model the more pearls we can bring up from it. This May I defended my doctoral dissertation titled “Impact of Teaching presence on learning outcomes. A qualitative study of perceptions through the lens of online teachers.” Link to it is: https://pqdtopen.proquest.com/pubnum/27833167.html.
My theoretical underpinning for this research topic was Co I model. The more I went deep, the more questions I had to ask, so here they are :
1. There has been a talk of the fourth circle for many years. Peter Shea suggested Learner presence, Martha Cleveland-Innes suggested Emotional presence, Jenny Lam suggested Autonomy presence, while you suggested, in 2018, the possibility of adding Agency presence instead of the three suggestions as above. However, no work was done on it to move forward, any reason for this hold up?
2. The definition of Teaching presence as given by the authors themselves shows teaching presence as being a catalyst for the other two presences. The definition clearly indicates that the other two presences need teaching presence even to really interact and produce enhanced outcomes. However, nowhere in the literature, except Fengfeng Ke uses the term catalyst for teaching presence. I believe that teaching presence has a duality of role in the model. It is 1 of the 3 presences and has a role to play on its own (even if the other two were not present), however it also acts as a catalyst for the other two. I believe we need to do more research on this duality.
3. If teaching presence is indeed playing two roles as above, then the current Venn diagram of three equal intersecting circles, creating equal segments is not a true representation. I have a diagram in mind but need to verify if my thinking is not flawed.
4. Many researchers publish articles, have seen two of them, where they are interchangeably using ‘teacher/faculty’ presence with ‘teaching’ presence. I believe this is incorrect practice. The former is a part of the latter specially in the facilitation of discourse and direct instruction element of teaching presence. In one case the writer used ‘teacher presence’ even when talking about the three presences in the model which to me changes the whole dynamics of the model.
Dear Sir, these 4 points have been troubling me for a year and i have talked to scores of professors BUT nobody seems to know what to tell me. I am looking towards you to please advise me if my track is wrong, if so, why.
Hoping for a detailed response, please, ASAP.
Hi Mansoor
Thanks for your note- I’m not sure I can totally answer these questions but…..
1. As you suggest there has been calls for additional presences for the COI for years. – in fact a whole article on the issue see Kozan, K., & Caskurlu, S. (2018). On the Nth presence for the Community of Inquiry framework. Computers & Education, 122, 104-118. I’m not exactly sure why there has been no “official” re-issue. Randy Garrison, Walter Archer and myself are all retired. But I think Randy would say the parsimonious nature of 3 presences is enough. One of the reasons for the success and widespread use of the model is its simplicity. The unofficial repository of COI coi.athabascau.ca is led by Marti Cleveland-Innes who may be able to add further. Jokingly, I’ve heard it said that a trinity was OK for Christians so why add more! In addition, by definition a Venn diagram has only three circles!
2. Indeed, there has always been discussion about which comes first. I think the success of MOOCs with only canned teachers presence and very little social presence, indicates that the COI is just a model for one type of constructivist online learning. I tend to think that all three are needed (in varying amounts) and not usre it is worth worrying about which is catalyst for which. Just my opinion!
3.Not sure of the response, but glad to see your diagram. I’ve also it said (written??) that social presence is needed as the first catalyst. Is it important to designate order??
4. I couldn’t agree more. We TRIED to make it clear from the beginning that peer teaching can and does play a part in quality learning and always tried to use the term ‘teaching presence’, but then it is hard to control what other people say!!
Not sure how detailed response you expected- hope this is OK!
All the best
Terry