As I was completing this infographic, I was thinking about how I could use these strategies in my organization. I work in Corporate Learning and sometimes that means that we are a bit limited in terms of what we can and cannot use as learning tools. For most of our social presence, we use MS Teams. Our meetings then are essentially communities where we can engage with one another and promote learning opportunities, etc. Each of our internal teams have their own channel essentially with projects having their own channels too, meaning we have a lot of communities of practice. However, not all these events can be called meaningful.

Some channels are just idol chat and meetings where the chat is enabled. However, when the channels are attached to a learning session, they can be engaging in terms of acquiring new information and keeping the learning going long after the session has ended. These channels do become opportunities for reflection and to ask critical questions regarding the content and promote new meaning making. I’d say with time and the right support and community norms, these could lead to communities of inquiry as well.

The Community of Inquiry (CoI) goes further than the social aspects of learning. COI considers cognitive presence. When I first read Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013), I had originally thought that the teaching presence was in an of itself, meaning that Social, Cognitive, and Teaching were mutually exclusive. However, after the second read, I realized that the teaching presence was the structure or process by which facilitation is used to teach. The facilitator has many roles to play whether that be by being present to guide communication or allowing the learners to collaborate with their peers. Therefore, there are various strategies a facilitator can implement to guide students or allow students to create meaningful learning experiences. I have outlined a few the infographic below. I think an important thing to keep in mind is that most of these strategies overlap. You will see that some social strategies for facilitation could also be used to promote critical thinking or cognitive presence.

Community of InquiryCommunity of Inquiry

 

References

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (1999). Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2–3), 87–105. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1096-7516(00)00016-6

Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. Athabasca University Press. Chapter 3: Facilitation (pp. 45-61).