Community of Inquiry: Seven Principles of Blended Learning
Concurrent Session 6
Brief Abstract
This session will demonstrate how to design, facilitate, and direct a blended course and/or program by using the seven principles of blended learning that have been derived from the Community of Inquiry framework.
Extended Abstract
The topic of the session and why it is relevant or important to the community.
The reality of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting widespread adoption of blended and online learning has necessitated a rapid and radical rethinking of the teaching-learning transaction. The pandemic resulted in a forced test of the potential of blended and online learning. The possibilities and constraints associated with these approaches to learning were in many ways unfairly put to the test as many educators lacked a research-based framework to guide the redesign of their courses and programs.
The key was to provide guidance and support to educators to migrate their curriculum and activities to an online learning environment. The enormity of the migration challenge and associated time constraints quickly became apparent. The tragedy was that faculty were too often left to their own devices or simply offered superficial teaching tips without a coherent understanding of the possibilities for an effective teaching-learning transaction online. Opportunities for both social and cognitive presence needed to be developed to effectively facilitate interpersonal relationships and intellectual discourse.
In this confusion, the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework (Garrison, 2017) attracted considerable attention. This framework offered a coherent representation and approach to online learning. It is for this reason that educators have turned to the CoI framework to provide perspective and guidance (Chiroma et al., 2021; Smadi et al., 2021a). The CoI framework has been shown to be a widely studied and adopted framework for blended and online education (Google Scholar, 2021). Considering the rapid developments in learning online, there is a growing need for a theoretical grounding of approaches and practices. In this regard, the CoI framework provides a map and rationale to rethink and migrate teaching and learning online. We need to look beyond the technology and focus on the pedagogical assumptions and principles of practice associated with collaborative online learning.
Educational research indicates that the way forward is through the adoption of the blending of face-to-face and online learning. To many this is the most obvious path to the acceptance and adoption of online learning. Blended learning (BL) is not new and has gained significant traction in higher education. We argued more than a decade ago that BL ``is emerging as the organizing concept in transforming teaching and learning while preserving the core values of higher education” (Garrison & Vaughan, 2008, p.143). This was based on the ability to fuse the distinct capabilities of synchronous and asynchronous communication shaped by the Community of Inquiry framework. Research has strongly supported this argument (Kintu et al., 2017). Moreover, the reality is that most classrooms in higher education have adopted BL approaches (Graham, 2019; Johnson, 2019). In addition, BL approaches resonate with faculty when they understand the educational possibilities. The flexibility of BL approaches provides distinct advantages for teachers as well as students. Interestingly, as BL becomes the norm in higher education, the term itself is becoming moot, as most traditional classrooms integrate online and face-to-face learning to various degrees.
Thus, the focus of this session is on the practical application of the CoI framework to the design, facilitation, and direction of blended courses and programs in higher education. To aid in this process, we have derived the following seven principles of blended learning:
- Design for open communication and trust that will create a learning community
- Design for critical reflection and discourse that will support inquiry
- Establish community and cohesion
- Establish inquiry dynamics (purposeful inquiry)
- Sustain respect and responsibility for collaboration
- Sustain inquiry that moves to resolution and shared metacognitive development
- Ensure assessment is congruent with intended processes and outcomes
This session will provide attendees with concrete examples of how they can apply these principles in their own blended courses and programs.
Your plan for interactivity
Throughout the session attendees will use a Google Doc planning template to collaboratively share ideas and resources on how to implement the seven principles of blended learning in their own courses and programs.
What the attendees are going to learn from the presentation (the takeaways)
Attendees will learn to apply the seven principles of blended learning in order to design, facilitate, and direct their own blended learning courses and/or programs.