Blog #2 Cognitive presence and online tools dated data?
What intrigues me most about cognitive presence is how it remains a concept that is still not readily discussed by post secondary educators, regardless of those employing distance education methods or not. While I appreciate the importance of well thought out lessons plans and assignments, the goal of evidence of student’s cognitive presence is not readily evident with some online learning activities. As well, it is not clear to me as an instructor how the ‘Community of Inquiry’(CoI) is to be viewed by an OLFM.
A lingering question I have is are Open Learning Faculty members a separate CoI that supports online learning of others, or are we co-members of the same CoI as our students? I would suggest the latter since it appears that I only have communication and reflective interests with one or two colleagues rather than full TRU department. Time and again I find myself wondering where my work fits in to the bigger institutional picture, yet it is not clear where my community exists. I have many questions about online learning, and yet I have been doing it for at least two decades. This is a valuable experience, although as teaching during the pandemic has taught me, one can not make assumptions of the limitations of students to engage and be willing and able to lead in the transition to multi learning platforms. Overall I found that my fears of ‘back channel’ conversations in an online chat functions were entirely unfounded, and in fact the chat became a central form of live lecture feedback. Humor goes a long way to easing the tensions and transitions, but more importantly provided memorable ‘community building’ sense of the class itself. Is this the same however as a Community of Inquiry? Perhaps not, but without humanistic social glue how can any student want to engage with a deeper more revealing that longed for Cognitive presence? As Instructors, we need to engage with our students on all multiple levels, to create a respectful Community of Inquiry.