Teaching Preparation for Collaborative Communities of Inquiry: Emotional Presence From the Instructor's Point of View

• In Event: The Community of Inquiry Framework: 20 Years and Going Strong

Abstract

Becoming a competent and confident online instructor is not just a matter of putting all your existing courses online (Richardson & Alsup, 2015) and trying to teach as you do in the lecture hall. Online teaching rests on a unique pedagogy (Garrison, 2017; Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes, & Garrison, 2013; Cornelius, & Higgison, 2000). Even instructors who have previous teaching development experiences can benefit from further training so that instructors can operate with competence online. There is growing concern in many places about “the inadequacy of teacher preparation programs treating technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge in isolation” (Papanikolaou, Makri, & Roussos, 2017, p. 1).
For Garrison (2017), a Community of Inquiry is a group of individuals who collaboratively engage in purposeful critical discourse and reflection to construct personal meaning and confirm mutual understanding. In this study, we expand Lehman’s (2006) argument that emotions are necessary to create a presence in an online learning environment and suggest that students should also be emotionally present in an online learning environment to achieve deep and meaningful learning. It is reasonable then to assume that emotions play a role in the experience of teaching and learning in technology-enabled education delivery. Using the Community of Inquiry theoretical framework and measurement tools as a base, this study measures the extent to which instructors identify Emotional Presence among their students in online and blended learning environments. This identification of emotion allows teachers to respond accordingly, when needed, to deflect or direct emotion in reference to building presence and a Community of Inquiry.

Authors

• Marti Cleveland-Innes, Athabasca University - Canada

• Debra Dell, Athabasca University