Social presence supports cognitive presence

Shea and Bidjerano (2009) conducted a survey of more than 2000 higher education students participating in a fully online learning network across 30 different institutions. They wanted to know whether teaching presence and social presence are linked to cognitive presence, as suggested by the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model (Garrison et al., 2000).

Using statistical analysis of the results (factor analysis, Structural Equation Modelling - SEM, and chi-square automatic interaction detection - CHAIAD analysis) they posit that their results show a correlation: ‘As predicted by the CoI model and confirmed by the SEM analysis, both teaching and social presence play a major role in predicting online students’ ratings of cognitive presence.’ (Shea and Bidjerano, 2009, p.549). They argue that 70% of the variance in cognitive presence can be linked to the students’ reports of their instructors’ skills in fostering teaching and social presence, and that the latter (social presence) is dependent on the former (teaching presence).

The authors further posit that the social presence element associated with comfort in online discussion was the most significant item correlating with cognitive presence; low levels of comfort in online discussion were strongly correlated with low levels of cognitive presence. In other words, in order to achieve critical thinking (high cognitive presence) students need to feel comfortable with discussing online. In addition they report that cognitive presence is significantly influenced by the participation of the instructor and by his/her attempts to focus the discussion.

These research results suggest that instructors have a significant effect on the success of an online learning community and the ability of learners to experience epistemic engagement

.. it is crucial to assist learners to gain comfort and confidence in the online discussion format in order to foster cognitive presence. Without this comfort, epistemic engagement in online learning suffers. A sensible approach would be to encourage students to reflect on their comfort levels with online discussion. If some students report lower levels of comfort, one strategy would be to promote reflection on why they feel this way and how they might overcome this discomfort, at the same time emphasizing that facility with online discussion appears essential to productive learning in this environment.
                                     (Shea and Bidjerano, 2009, p.551)

These results are similar to what I experienced during the Learning Event last year on web 2.0 tools and I wondered to what extent this is reflected in my results: in my final questionnaire is there a similar correlation between social presence and cognitive presence? In one of the survey questions, question 13b, I presented the respondents with a list of five activities and asked them to rate them in order of importance:

13b - Which statements best describe your experience of posting messages?

Number them in order of importance, from 1 to 5 (1 = most important, 5 = least important)

I enjoyed reading the comments of others

I enjoyed posting comments and giving feedback

I enjoyed receiving feedback

I enjoyed asking questions to clarify my understanding

I enjoyed socialising and making friends

It is likely that those who put the last of the five options - socialising and making friends – first (i.e.1/5) in their list of choices felt comfortable with online discussion. Whereas we cannot argue the contrary for those who put it last (5/5), it would be interesting to see the relationship between these answers and cognitive presence.

Cognitive presence is associated with critical thinking (Garrison et al., 2001) and the final reflection that we held at the end of the LE was a specific activity aimed at encouraging the sharing of experience, reflection on practice and increasing understanding. One of the questions in the survey, question 31c, asked respondents whether or not they found the final reflection useful in this respect. The question was posed as a dichotomy of two equally valid responses and the respondent was asked to what extent they agreed with one or the other:

31c - What best describes your experience of the time allowed to apply ideas in your own teaching practice and the final reflection activities in the Learning Event?
Statement E	<...........?.........>	Statement F
I found it not very useful to share my experience with others in the final reflection		I found it really useful to share my experience with others in the final reflection

It is likely that those who chose statement F rather than statement E experienced higher levels of critical thinking. So how do the results of question 31c relate to those of 13b? The graph below illustrates (click on image to make it larger):

 

The graph shows that the majority of respondents who indicated that they mostly enjoyed socialising found it really useful to share their experience with others in the final reflection. Whereas those that put socialising with others at the bottom of their list of preferences were less certain of the value of the final reflection. These results neither prove nor disprove the arguments put forward by Shea and Bidjerano, but they do correlate with the idea that social presence supports cognitive presence.

In my research I am using my final questionnaire to guide my qualitative analysis and whereas I am not intending to use statistical analysis, I found the paper by Shea and Bidjerano interesting. One area where I would tend to disagree is with the emphasis on the involvement of the instructor. It is true that the instructor or tutor can greatly influence the performance of an online community through their design of the environment and the cognitive activities. However, when it comes to participation in the community, much of what is prescribed by Shea and Bidjerano as being instructor intervention can be achieved equally well by the learners themselves providing the teaching presence by leading a discussion, guiding others and threading the discussion in their contributions.

I finish with a final observation from Shea and Bidjerano:

Additionally, qualitative research that examines the nature of the discourse in online threaded discussions would shed light on the kinds of instructional conversations that lead to social and cognitive presence as well as those that result in lower levels of engagement and learning. It is only through such varied research approaches that we will gain further insight into the ways that online education can benefit from ongoing advances in technology, pedagogy, and the science of learning.             (Shea and Bidjerano, 2009, p.552)

Indeed.

Brian

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Garrison, D., Anderson, T. & Archer, W. (2001) 'Critical thinking, cognitive presence, and computer conferencing in distance education'. American Journal of Distance Education, 15 (1), pp.7-23

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T. & Archer, W. (2000) 'Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education'. The Internet and Higher Education, 2 (2-3), pp.87-105

Shea, P. & Bidjerano, T. (2009) 'Community of inquiry as a theoretical framework to foster ‘‘epistemic engagement” and ‘‘cognitive presence” in online education'. Computers & Education, 52, pp.543-553

BERA Annual Conference 2011, 6th – 8th September, Institute of Education, London

I am thinking of submitting an abstract for the British Educational Research Association (BERA) annual conference in London in September. It looks like a good event to present my work and the process  of producing a paper will give me something for which to aim. A short abstract is due by next weekend.

I may also have the opportunity to work with Tiina again for a workshop at the eTwinning conference, scheduled for 31 March - 2 April in Budapest, Hungary. This would be great as the recent Learning Event has given us a rich source of material and experience to call upon when discussing web 2.0 and moderation skills.

Brian

Teachers' expectations

I've started to analyse the data from the Learning Event (LE), looking firstly at the transcripts of the interviews that I held with some participants before they started. I held 8 interviews over Skype and 43 by email, asking the same questions in all cases. The first question was What are your expectations for this event? and using Atlas.ti, as an experiment, I've coded the replies.

The image above shows a section of a reply to the first question from a participant, submitted by email. On the right you can see the codes that I've applied, which on this occasion are Web 2.0 and tools and Digital skills and competence - you will probably need to click on the image to expand it and read the information . The other codes you can see, for example Channel were added automatically by Atals.ti as I imported the data and represent the headings for each chunk of data - in this case, whether the information was submitted by email or by Skype.

The overall coding results from the 51 participants are as follows:

In other words, there were 25 instances of participants including reference to the use of Web 2.0 and its associated tools in their answers to the question on What are your expectations for this event?. Similarly, 20 people made reference to using these tools in their teaching practice. Some of the codes could possibly be combined, for example Cooperation and collaboration could be joined with eTwinning project, as one is usually done within the context of another. This is easily achieved with the tool.

The results in themselves are not too surprising. They reflect a full range of expectations, with a focus mainly on learning specific web 2.0 tools and gaining experience of using them in their teaching practice. What perhaps will be more interesting is to compare these to results obtained from the final interviews were the same questions were asked.

This experience of using content analysis techniques and Computer Aided Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS) was interesting but also raised a number of concerns for me that are to some extent echoed by Enriquez (2009). Analysing dialogue using coding schemes tends to focus your attention on the detail, the individual words, perhaps at the expense of seeing a bigger picture. Indeed, in an attempt to keep one's coding scheme limited, in order to achieve parsimony, one is encouraged to group together different expressions under the same heading. Yet they may hide important different latent meanings that would add depth to the analysis if they were surfaced rather than suppressed. I also note that the very process of coding using a CAQDAS leads you to quantitative data results - for example, in the case above, it is convenient to report that only 20/51 respondents (i.e. ~40%) referred to learning how to use web 2.0 tools in their teaching practice as an explicit expectation, but what does this result actually mean?

Enriquez (2009) raises discontent with the prevailing use of content analysis in online discourse, suggesting that the written word only reflects part of the context for knowledge production. In order to have a fuller picture, one should take into account the external environment for the discussion (the situation of the learner), the internal environment (text in chats is of a different nature to that in forums), the temporal structure (asynchronous is different to synchronous), the purpose of the discussion (topic or  project related, for example) and the characteristics of the members of the group (experience of online collaboration, English skills, etc), to mention a few. In order to do this, she proposes the use of genres as an alternative to content analysis. Whereas I find her arguments compelling, I do not fully understand how genres could be applied in practice (she refers us to other papers for examples of application). I would also say that I will be comparing two very similar situations, the LE held earlier this year and the recent one, where several of these variables will be largely stable. I therefore feel that it should indeed be useful to analyse the content, though my recent experimentation has highlighted to me the dangers of getting to bogged down with the coding and the use of a tool which makes simplifications so easy to implement.

Brian.

Enriquez, J. G. (2009) 'Discontent with content analysis of online transcripts'. ALT-J: Research in Learning Technology, 17 (2), pp.101 - 113

More than just a Learning Event

I've been interviewing teachers recently who took part in the Learning Event (LE), via Skype. In particular, those who I interviewed before they started and who managed to complete the event, and were able to contribute to the final reflection.

A few things have struck me from these discussions. Firstly the enthusiasm they portray from their experience. For several of them, this was more than just a LE addressing web 2.0 tools, it was a life changing experience that has opened up new avenues in their teaching practice. I've heard from teachers who used such tools for the first time, but were able to try them out with fellow teachers in their schools and saw a marvellous reaction from their pupils. For them, this is the start of a new adventure which has only just started. It is gratifying to see how happy the teachers are when they are able to provide something new for their pupils, that engages them and increases their personal kudos as teachers.

Secondly it is interesting to see the extent to which their initial expectations were met. Many expressed their original goals in terms of learning about new web 2.0 tools. They learned about these, but more importantly they also learned about how to use them in their teaching practice, they shared concrete examples with their peers and they developed personally in terms of their own competence.

So everything sounds perfect? Well not exactly. The experience from these pioneering few is not necessarily representative of the majority. As I said in my previous post, this transformation only happened (generally) for those that managed to complete the course and invested time and effort in the activities. The others still learned, but perhaps not at quite such a deep level; they learned about the individual tools but not necessarily about how to use them in their teaching practice and the lack of collaboration, of 'learning-by-doing', meant that they didn't develop their own competence to quite the same degree.

So I've also been asking those teachers who didn't complete why they thought this was. Their answers reflect a complex picture of busy teachers with difficult personal schedules meaning that they had insufficient time to be able to invest themselves in the time-consuming collaboration, of teachers so new to online collaboration that they simply felt left behind by the experience (to the extent that the LE could have a negative impact on their motivation), and of some who simply did not expect this type of LE and were expecting to be more autonomous, independent learners, following the LE at their own pace.

I also noted that for some teachers the learning philosophy of reflection-in-practice is not something they have previously experienced. Indeed their own teaching style is more instructional and they in turn expected the tutors/facilitators to be more instrumental in summarising the learning outcomes of the group.

This run of the LE has, I feel, managed to achieve a level of collaboration that was missing or was less evident in the previous run earlier this spring. As such, needs have arisen  that we had not anticipated. These included, at a certain point, a need for Tiina and I to raise the issue of netiquette and awareness of what might be considered to be inappropriate behaviour in an online community. On reflection I feel there was a need for the small groups that we had set up (the Round Tables) to openly discuss and agree what they expected from each other in terms of contribution, timing, etc (this may have helped addressed the legitimate concerns raised by Daniela in her comment on the way the groups were established). As it was, the absence of such an agreement led to some groups experiencing frustration - examples from my analysis include:
- some participants contributed whilst other didn't, leading to a sense of inequality or even resentment for the effort invested;
- several natural leaders emerging within a single group who (in retrospect) might have been rather dominant in their approach to setting up blogs, Google docs, etc as places for the group to collaborate;
- perhaps unsympathetic replies (or certainly less supportive messages) to peers who arrived late in the group to find ideas had already been "decided", etc.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Certainly my feeling is that for every innovation we employ in learning, there are important disadvantages that may emerge. These may be in terms of uncomfortable power shifts within the group, of the different starting levels for the participants (experienced collaborators compared with inexperienced novices) leading to unequal opportunities for growth and feelings of inadequacy, of reinforced teaching presence (such as clearer guidelines) for some leading to the loss of a valuable learning experience for others (who might have learned more through initial failure), etc. So each new innovation leads to a rebalance of the pros and cons, and to the need for us to reconsider our teaching practice. Nothing can be taken for granted.

Food for thought, and there is certainly plenty of fodder for me in the data from this experience!

Brian.

What an experience

The revised Learning Event (LE) on web 2.0 tools and collaboration finished recently and what an experience it was. We tried out some of the ideas that emerged from the first LE earlier in the year and I participated as a facilitator in the Staff Room and in the final reflection. I was again impressed by the level of enthusiasm and commitment of the teachers involved.

It will take me several months to analyse all the data - and boy is there lots. So what can I say from what I see so far? Well I think we can consider it a success as far as the participants were concerned. The final questionnaire conducted by the European Schoolnet shows 66% indicating that the event was excellent and 30% very good (n=127). There was a terrific response to my final questionaire with 87 replies that is 58% of those that started the event. Here is a summary that I added to my presentation at Online Educa:

I need now to follow this up with more interviews and with an analysis of the discourse in the forums. However, from what I have seen so far, it appears that those teachers who persevered until the end - trying out what they had learned in their own teaching practice and then sharing their experience with their peers in the final reflection - learned not only about the tools but also about how to apply them for teaching and about the consequences for their own professional development. Whereas those that finished after the first 12 days of activity tended to learn only about the tools. If this can be confirmed in my analysis then it will be a significant result as this is precisely what we were aiming to improve.

39% of the teachers who started the LE completed the final activities, that is 59% of those that were still active after the first 12 days. This is a really good result; I was talking to a friend of my who delivers face-to-face training courses for HR professionals in the UK and she remarked that it is always a challenge to convince participants to come back to the course after a period away. Indeed, given that these figures only reflect postings to the forums (contributions), the number actually involved will have been higher as I am sure there will have been some who will have read the postings and benefited from the experience of others without posting themselves (lurkers). Such vicarious learning is surely valuable.

The quantitative results are useful in terms of offering immediate feedback. However, my research is primarily qualitative in nature and so I must now press on with the time consuming task of walking through the interview scripts and forum dialogues, coding and analysing. Onwards we go ...

Brian

Busy, busy, busy

I realise it has been a while since I posted a message, only I have been so busy and I am only now finding the time.

I've just been visting the campus at Lancaster University and I was struck again by the positive feeling one gets from being there. The intellectual discussions in the bars, the students with their heads in books and the serendipitous meetings with interesting people. I was able to have a very useful meeting with my supervisor Julie-Ann and a discussion with Maria, another tutor on the course. Both chats help me to refocus my thoughts. It was also great to meet John, a fellow student, and to exchange references, ideas and tips. One of the reasons for my visiting the campus was to attend a short course on Atlas.ti. It was really useful as a reminder of what the tool can offer and how to take advantage of its powerful functionality. I am now keen to get on and use the tool to help analyse my data.

I recently gave a presentation at a workshop (PED74) at Online Educa. It was good to give a public airing to my work. There were several teachers in the audience and I saw reassuring knods of approval as I spoke. A very useful and rewarding experience. Incidently, for my fulltime job I participated in a couple of workshops on assessing learning in a digital world (AP18 & AP33). The first involved an insightful discussion on the need for a change in assessment approaches for online learning in a web 2.0 environment. After my opening presentation there was one offered by Thomas Ryberg (presented by me as he was unfortunately stuck in snow in Denmark) and an intervention by Kiran Trehan. Both did an excellent job at highlighting some of the challenges associated with this new way of learning. Thomas explained how learning with web 2.0 implies much more than just a new environment, it means a change in culture to participative, active learning involving such possibilities as contributing to the design of the learning and the definition of the assessment criteria. Kiran reminded us of the expectations of online learning in communities and by referring to some concrete examples from a course run at Lancaster, was able to highlight some of the darker elements asssociated with power, inequality and the ubiquitous search for consenus. The second session introduced some relevant EU funded projects under the Lifelong Learning Programme that are faced with these challenges and are looking at practical ways forward. This was the first time we had brought academics together with practitioners and it really worked. The presentations should appear on our Agency's web site in the near future and I will add  link here when they do.

Last but not least, I've been very busy following and facilitation the revised Learning Event with Tiina, but this warrants a seperate posting so I shall stop here for now.

Brian

Coding a Community of Inquiry

I've been continuing my reading of papers concerning the coding of transcripts in online discussion forums, focusing for the moment on the Community of Inquiry framework (Garrison et al, 2000).

In a review of the use of the theoretical framework, Garrison (2007) raises a number of issues that I feel I should take into account when carrying out my coding of the Learning Event (LE):

• Social presence is necessary but not sufficient for critical thinking and the successful development of a community in an online environment. 'social presence must move beyond simply establishing socio-emotional presence and personal relationships.  Cohesion requires intellectual focus (i.e., open and purposeful communication) and respect.' (2007, p.63). In analysing the social presence, we should look beyond the quantity of interactions to their quality in terms of establishing a climate of open communication, of collaboration and of community cohesion.
• It is interesting to see how social communication changes over time as the participants become more confident and comfortable with the community. Hence, I should also code the date of the messages
• Some studies have suggested that gender may effect the nature of communication, especially if there is a lack of a balance in the group (as in our LE), so I should also code the gender associated with the messages.
• The impact of the instructor/teacher/tutor is emphasised in several studies, so I should be particularly attentive to interventions from the two tutors, to the description of the activities and to the instructions given in the forums. That said, I do not necessarily agree with the emphasis placed on the role of the tutor, but prefer to be more open to the teaching presence being reinforced through the messages of the participants themselves (initiating solutions, guiding their peers, etc)
• There is suggestion that critical thinking may be encouraged by the tutor being quite transparent in linking the activities explicitly to the stages of critical thinking. There is even the suggestion that the tutors and the participants should self-code their messages as they post them. Whereas this might serve as an interesting research activity, I feel that it would be focusing the attention of the participants too much on the process that they are following rather than the end goal of learning and trying to achieve a useful, practical outcome. That said, it may be useful to reflect on this for the final activity (Reflection) due in three weeks' time.
• The question is raised as to whether the coding scheme should remain at the category level or go down to individual indicators (see the table that I presented in an earlier posting, showing the various categories for the three presences and the possible indicators). I need to do more reading before deciding the level to adopt, however I like the idea of keeping it simple and practicable by remaining at the category level if this is feasible.

Brian
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Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T. & Archer, W. (2000) 'Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education'. The Internet and Higher Education, 2 (2-3), pp.87-105

Garrison, D. (2007) 'Online community of inquiry review: Social, cognitive, and teaching presence issues'. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 11 (1), pp.61-72