I've always wondered about the idea of 'presence' as fundamental to teaching and learning online, as suggested by Garrison, Anderson & Archer in 2001. To me, presence has a certain ineffable quality, which may be good or bad. Either way, it's hard to pin down. This paper describes the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model, a framework "that explains the online learning experience in terms of interactions between three overlapping presences: Teaching, Social and Cognitive." It's a largish study (n=643) that asks the basic question, "Please describe one thing the instructor did that helped you to succeed in this course" and examines the answers in the light of CoI. According to the survey, "The largest single perceived instructor action responsible for course success... was providing feedback that helped them understand their strengths and weaknesses." The largest negative factor was lack of feedback. Yet we also see that "regardless of learner level, the need for presentation of clear, concise objectives, instructions and general participation guidelines should be a cornerstone of online course development." Of course, this may reflect student beliefs about instruction rather than the actual value of pedagogical methods themselves. The study reaches what I would suggest is the cynical conclusion that "adequate projection of the indicators of instructional design and organization are required."
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