Unit 1 – Assignment 1: Community of Inquiry

The infographic above illustrates key strategies to support the Community of Inquiry for Leadership Development in a virtual training environment.  The strategies I’ve chosen support an environment where our operational leaders, who are geographically spread across all of British Columbia, have voiced their challenges and concerns with attending classroom training due to budget cuts, limited availability for travel to and from headquarters, ineffectiveness and ongoing capacity issues and time constraints.  Majority of our operational leaders in supervisor roles, spend time on the ground and on site with their crew managing and supporting day to day tasks.

As we shift into a new learning space leaders have suggested supportiveness, receptiveness, excitement and acceptance of training through virtual training platforms delivered both synchronously and asynchronously.

As the primary instructional designer and facilitator, I’ve listed some strategies, however will leverage many more not mentioned. I felt the ones on the infographic best support the leaders to be successful and will in the greatest outcomes in participation, engagement, trust, collaboration, meaningful and deeper learning.  In the Community of Inquiry if successfully integrated and facilitated with the interplay of social, teaching and cognitive presence can result and emerge the higher-order learning with purposeful and critical discourse (Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes, & Garrison, 2013).

Social presence where participants identify with the community, build and foster a trusting and safe learning environment, as well as share perspectives, stories and experiences will result in greater group cohesion (Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes, & Garrison, 2013).  Through a few strategies suggested such as acclimation to the learning environment, personalized introductions and activities promoting increased discussions and sharing will create learner motivation and engagement.

Teaching presence with its 3 elements of design, facilitation and instruction will support the necessity of the foreign learning environment many leaders voice concerns about and their aptitude level.  Through well-constructed learning environments, enriched discussions through effective questioning techniques, appropriate learning activities and leadership around content accuracy and expectations, it will support the social and cognitive presence desired (Anderson, 2018).

Cognitive presence is when learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through ongoing reflection and discourse. Through strategies such as modelling and encouraging divergent thinking, reflective and critical questioning, as well as encouraging debates and the dialogue around the possibilities of more than one solution will deepen and enrich learning (Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes, & Garrison, 2013).

References

Anderson, T. (2018).  How Communities of Inquiry Drive Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age. Contact North.

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).

6 Replies to “Unit 1 – Assignment 1: Community of Inquiry”

  1. Hi Dorothy,
    I really enjoyed reading your post and infographic. Your infographic was very comprehensive and clear to read.

    One of your strategies under teaching presence really resonated with me. You mentioned to present content using a conversational style. To me, that is important to ensure that you will be relatable to develop a connection with the learners. This, in turn, also contributes to the social presence since it will make them more comfortable within this environment. In keeping the aforementioned strategy in mind, I wonder if there were other strategies that you suggested which would address two or more presences? I looked at my infographic to reflect on this point as well.

    Cheers!
    Joyce

    1. Thank you Joyce for your comment around conversational style and to further echo what you noted it really fosters a learning environment that doesn’t talk down or to, rather talks with and connects so much more effectively with adult learners.

      Conversation style versus academic style dialogue creates a sense of psychological safety that we can present ourselves as who we are as leaders in the different environments from the field and office and ‘it doesn’t have to sound smart’.

      It also validates that however they articulate, share and participate in to the discussions it is encouraging real conversations that matter and evoking more story telling and experiences, which is what I am hoping for in order to learn from each other, try things peers have tried before and just lean in to experiences in order to help them prepare for a difficult conversation.

      In respect to your question around is there any strategies that overlay in to another presence and once again great opportunity to go back and see if there are any that feed in to another presence.

      When looking at the one under social presence and the strategy for synchronous session, I do feel that not only is it a great way to inject social presence by bringing us together in to live session and discuss past weeks learnings and upcoming learnings or a particular topic, but also it allows for teaching presence not only by the facilitator to provide some direct instruction or clarity, but also for others to share their ideas and thoughts.

      Thinking about engaging, encouraging and asking questions under the cognitive presence, it can nicely flow in to teaching presence, since asking questions can help evoke teaching by contributing to the learning, supporting the learning and even providing guidance and direction to think or feel something differently from a different perspective.

      Appreciate your questions Joyce.

      Thanks.
      Dorothy

  2. Dorothy – Your infographic and explanations resonated with me and I really like the benefits you outlined. I was wondering what is the time and length allocated for attending your online program. Because leadership is a continuous learning competency, I was also wondering if a the CoI would be leaning towards becoming a CoP and therefore integrate both models. I wish there was more word allowance for this blogposts to elaborate a bit more on how it would fit in within the busy schedule on the executives attending it. Dino.

    1. Hello Dino,

      What a great perspective to share. It actually forced me to consider the bigger picture of my intentions of the ‘whole leadership’ learning journey versus just isolating the one course within the leadership program called ‘difficult conversations’. As I further explored Community of Practice and the sense of greater purpose as a community of leaders, who have common and shared concerns and passions for building great teams, it would be a miss if that wasn’t considered as a larger outcome of the leadership program that I hope to achieve.

      Creating a greater digital space for opportunities for formal and informal discussions on any topic they feel could support them to be better leaders or even generate brainstorming and ideation to solve a larger problem like a change coming down the pipe that the crew won’t like … having each other to converse with would be powerful.

      Many times we feel someone of greater authority, different department or outside vendor needs to come and solve, however they have the power of all their minds coming together and collaborating to find solutions amongst themselves.

      Here is something I discovered from a [blog post] https://wenger-trayner.com/resources/what-is-a-community-of-practice/ retrieved on September 23, 2019 where it went to describe 3 key elements of a CoP:

      The domain: members are brought together by a learning need they share (whether this shared learning need is explicit or not and whether learning is the motivation for their coming together or a by-product of it)

      The community: their collective learning becomes a bond among them over time (experienced in various ways and thus not a source of homogeneity)

      The practice: their interactions produce resources that affect their practice (whether they engage in actual practice together or separately)

      Thanks.
      Dorothy

  3. Hi Dorothy, I find your infographic to be very informative and liked how your used the same image to represent all the strategies. I really connected with the “model and encourage divergent thinking, critical questioning and multiple perspectives in discussion”. I sometimes find these to be daunting to add, what are some ideas you had to model these. I often find when students are asked to take multiple perspectives, they play the devil’s advocate, which is often done with a negative tone.

    1. Thanks Amanda for your comment. I agree that activities that promote more of that deeper learning, such as encouraging and engaging in divergent thinking, critical questioning and sharing varied perspectives can take more time, effort and also be challenging as you are going beyond the ‘surface level’ of how one may respond or think or feel.

      Some of the considerations in activities within lessons that require these types of demonstrations, could be in a reflective format with just oneself, pair groups, small groups or large groups.

      I have used the following types of activities to promote this type of divergent thinking, critical questioning and/or sharing of perspectives in past instructional design, as well as facilitation.

      • The Great Debate
      • Case studies
      • Six Thinking Hats
      • Cafe conversations (table topics)
      • Flip Charts / Post It’s – What I know, What I want to Know … and then Something New that I didn’t Know (after as a reflection)
      • 5 Why’s … must ask 5 times WHY to each response to get to the root of issue
      • Loopy Thinking
      • Design Thinking especially when groups of people trying to ideate and solve business problems
      • Diverse Thinking into the language and for consideration … bringing in to dialogue especially if the audience may not be heterogeneous group or not as willing to discuss

      Let me know if any of these interest you and I can send some more details and information your way.

      Thanks.
      Dorothy

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.