My passion and area of expertise is child development and family wellness. Since 2016, our child psychology clinic has offered workshops to parents and child development professionals.
Given the complexity of facilitating online learning, it’s important to consider the skills and competencies it requires (University of Wisconsin-Madison, n.d.). Over time and with practice, we have developed clearly defined roles related to the design, creation, marketing, facilitation, and ongoing participant support related to our online offerings. Our registered psychologist leads content creation, live facilitation and manages social media and online community discussions. I take on the administrative and technical roles, including communications, marketing, sales, design, platform build, publishing and technical support.
According to Lowenthal & Dunlap (2018), the Community of Inquiry Model (CoI) proposes that engaging online learning communities are created through a balance of teaching, social and cognitive presence, skillfully orchestrated by facilitators. The above infographic illustrates the balancing act faced while integrating the right mix of presence into online parenting courses to ensure participants find solutions to their most pressing parenting challenges.
Using the Community of Inquiry model, our LRNT528 resources, and my personal experience, here are the top three practical strategies we use within each of the facilitator presences to create engaging, learner-centred experiences:
Social presence:
- Create and model a safe, trusting and respectful environment. Parent guilt is real!
- Be authentic, share personal stories, and find shared meaning.
- Encourage community building by providing various ways to connect with facilitators and each other: live Q&As, online parent community, social media channels.
Teaching presence:
- Intentionally designed, accessible modules that are short, offer choice of relevant strategies, and can be taken individually or as part of a series.
- Present current, engaging and relevant science-backed content.
- Set clear boundaries around depth of advise provided in synchronous sessions, or online communities.
Cognitive presence:
- Provide choice in strategies and practical activities that can be customised to suit unique needs, beliefs and values.
- Provide opportunity to submit tracking and reflection work sheets to support the iterative process of change over time.
- Encourage discussion and curiosity around solutions to parenting problems in live sessions, online parent communities, and social media channels. Parents often share great solutions.
Focussing on teaching, cognitive and social presence through the Community of Inquiry model can help to improve engagement and ultimately the positive impact on the families we serve.
Resources:
Dunlap, J., & Lowenthal, P. (2018). Online educators’ recommendations for teaching online: Crowdsourcing in action. Open praxis, 10(1), 79-89. https://www.learntechlib.org/p/183573/
University of Wisconsin-Madison (n.d.). Online Instructor Roles. Instructional Resources. https://kb.wisc.edu/instructional-resources/page.php?id=121264
Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013).Teaching in Blended Learning Environments: Creating and Sustaining Communities of Inquiry. https://read.aupress.ca/read/teaching-in-blended-learning-environments/section/43261c4a-6d4c-44cf-8c7f-60bc306eb03a
Thank you for sharing your post Lara! I really like your infographic using the image of the facilitator balancing the three presences on a seesaw is such a clear and engaging way to show the role we play in online learning. It captures so well the constant adjustments needed depending on learner needs and group dynamics.
I also appreciate how you connected the blocks in the visual directly to concrete strategies, like setting clear boundaries, providing customizable activities, and creating safe and trusting spaces. It makes the CoI model feel both practical and directly applicable to the parenting workshops you facilitate.
Your example of balancing presences in such a high-stakes context, where parents are often seeking immediate, meaningful support, really highlights the importance of intentional design. I’m curious: when facilitating, do you find yourself leaning more heavily on one presence (teaching, social, or cognitive), or does the balance tend to shift fluidly throughout a session?
Thank you Weri for so accurately summing up what I was actually thinking as I conceptualized the infographic! We’ve been delivering online workshops for so long that I think we’ve taken the learning environment for granted. Breaking down the facilitation process into social, cognitive and teaching presence makes elements more visible. Even without a formal audit of our usual process, I can easily identify a few strategies we could trial to create more opportunities for participation and engagement.
Great question, about how presence flows throughout the workshops. Now that I see our practice through the CoI framework, we do lean heavily on teaching presence. We tend to leverage our experience to curate content that anticipates what parents are struggling with. I think adjusting our flow to inspire more cognitive presence could make for a more valuable and customized learning experience. Since engaging in the MALAT, I have also been thinking critically about our biases and considering where our blind spots could be hiding!
Hi Lara,
What stood out to me most was the way you approach social presence…I like how you name parent guilt directly while also focusing on building a respectful, trusting environment. Sometimes just acknowledging those feelings makes such a difference. I also hadn’t really thought about how setting clear boundaries in synchronous sessions could actually strengthen teaching presence instead of holding it back. And your emphasis on customizable strategies for cognitive presence feels really supportive and flexible.
I really liked your approach to the infographic with the balancing act on scales; it does a great job showing how much juggling is involved in this kind of work, but I’m curious, when things get especially busy, how do you decide which presence to lean into most?