A network-based analytic approach to uncovering the relationship between social and cognitive presences in communities of inquiry

doi:10.1016/j.iheduc.2019.05.001

The Internet and Higher Education

Volume 42, July 2019, Pages 53-65

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2019.05.001 Get rights and content

Highlights

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This paper presents a method to analyze the relationship between social and cognitive community of inquiry presences.
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It uses epistemic network analysis to extract more details about this relationship.
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We also used the same method to study the effectiveness of an instructional intervention.
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Finally, we evaluated how the the relationship between social and cognitive presences change over time during the course.

Abstract

This paper presents a network-based approach to uncovering the relationship between the elements of social and cognitive presences in a community of inquiry. The paper demonstrates how epistemic network analysis (ENA) can provide new qualitative and quantitative insights into the students' development of social and critical thinking skills in communities of inquiry. More specifically, ENA was used to accomplish three different research goals: i) uncovering links between social and cognitive presences of communities of inquiry; ii) evaluating the effectiveness of two instructional interventions on student experience as measured by connections between cognitive and social presences; and iii) exploring how the relationship between social and cognitive presences changed over time during a course. The proposed approach was applied to the coded transcripts of asynchronous online discussions performed in a fully-online graduate level course. The results of this study showed that indicators of social presence had more association with the exploration and integration phases of cognitive presence. Besides, indicators of the affective category of social presence had stronger links with the two high levels of cognitive presence (i.e., integration and resolution), while indicators of interactive messages of social presence were more connected to the two low levels (triggering events and exploration) of cognitive presence.

Introduction

Asynchronous online discussions are fundamental to facilitate social interaction within fully online and blended courses in higher education (Anderson & Dron, 2010). They play an essential role in educational experience of students encouraging them to increase their course participation by answering questions, sharing resources, and solving problems, for instance (Hew & Cheung, 2008). Researchers have shown several benefits of online interactions (critical thinking, creativity, and argumentation) rising the need to better understand how asynchronous online discussions can be used to promote learning and knowledge (co-)construction in a group of students (Garrison, Cleveland-Innes, & Fung, 2010; Dawson, Tan, & McWilliam, 2011).

The social constructivist model called Community of Inquiry (CoI) is a well-known framework that aims to outline how asynchronous online communication shapes student learning and their cognitive development (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 1999). The CoI model defines three dimensions that mold the learning experience (i.e., social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence) and assumes an overlapping relationship among the three presences that enhance the students on-line learning capability (Kozan & Richardson, 2014). Over the years, many studies have shown the practical value and benefits of the CoI model, such as the influence on the engagement of students and learning outcomes (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2010), applications in computer-supported collaborative scenarios (Joksimović, Gašević, Kovanović, Adesope, & Hatala, 2014), and the relationships between use of educational technology by the learners and the dimensions of the CoI model (Kovanović, Gašević, Joksimović, Hatala, & Adesope, 2015).

This paper proposes the adoption of a network analytic approach to advance insights into the relationship between social and cognitive presences in asynchronous online discussions. Unlike most of studies that focused on this relation with self-report instruments, the current study uses coded transcripts of asynchronous online discussions. The methodological contribution of this study is the use of Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA) (Shaffer et al., 2009) to study the association between the social and cognitive presences. ENA allowed for better understanding of the association between the four phases of cognitive presence and the indicators of social presence. The proposed network analytic approach was further applied to assess the effects of an intervention aimed to foster higher levels of cognitive presence in a fully-online graduate-level course in software engineering over six offerings. Finally, the way how the relationship between social and cognitive presences changes over time was also investigated with ENA. The study presented here has practical implications both in terms of the use of the proposed network-based analysis and the results of the application of the methodology of analysis.

Section snippets

The community of inquiry model

According to (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2010), the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model is the most widely-used and researched theoretical framework that outlines the important facets of social interactions in online and blended education. CoI explains behaviors of students and instructors with the purpose of describing how educational experience can be more effective by providing three indicators of their relationships, known as presences (Garrison et al., 1999):

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Social presence measures the

Research questions

Section 2.2 stressed the importance of analyzing the relationship between social and cognitive presences. As presented, several studies have addressed this relationship, in general, using correlation analysis between self-reported measures. However, there has been much less research on that association with the use of content analysis. Moreover, the existing research offers little insight into how phases and indicators of cognitive and social presences are related to each other. Thus, the first

The data and course design

The data used in the present study consisted of six offerings (Winter 2008, Fall 2008, Summer 2009, Fall 2009, Winter 2010, Winter 2011) of a master level research-intensive course in software engineering offered entirely online, through the Moodle LMS, at a Canadian public university between 2008 and 2011. In those six offerings, a total of 81 students posted 1747 messages. The course encompassed six modules that covered 14 different topics related to software engineering. The students were

Research question 1

Fig. 1 shows the group-average graph for all students with the relationships between social and cognitive presences. The visualization was done using svd₁ and svd₂, which accounted for 19.2 and 12% of variability of the epistemic networks created by the students, respectively. The results obtained indicate that the Y-axis (i.e., svd₂) primarily distinguishes between students focusing more on the early phases (triggering event and exploration) or the later phases (integration and resolution) of

Research question 1

The results of the current study unveiled that the codes representing indicators of social presence were distributed over the X-Axis, Fig. 1. Interactive indicators were located more on the right-hand side of the graph, especially the Asking_Question indicator. The Cohesive indicators were in the middle and the Affective on the left-hand side. This can be explained by the fact that the Interactive category of social presence is generally associated with the Triggering Event phase of cognitive

Conclusions and lines for further work

The primary contribution of the present study is a novel network analytic method for the assessment of the relationship between social and cognitive presences. Through a graph-based analysis, called Epistemic Network Analysis, in-depth insights into the connections among the social presence indicators and the cognitive presence phases were uncovered. Moreover, by examining these two presences at the student level instead of at the message level, a much richer understanding of the development of

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Argumentation involves collaboration and regulation of learning. In recent years, regulation of learning, which involves self-, co-, and socially shared regulations, has attracted much attention across a range of domains. To date, studies on these forms of regulation, especially on cognitive regulation, have explored the temporal and sequential patterns of regulatory processes using various sample sizes, especially in collaborative learning, whereas few studies were found on how different argumentation scaffolds affect the structure of these three types of regulation. With the maturity of cloud computing and 5G technology, many kinds of collaborative whiteboards can be adopted to support students' argumentation. In this study, Toulmin's Argument Pattern (TAP) and Nussbaum's Argument Vee Diagram (AVD) scaffolds were integrated into an online whiteboard to assist with collaborative argumentation. A total of 193 pre-service teachers of five intact classes were recruited and evenly assigned to the control cohort, the TAP cohort and the AVD cohort. This study conducted a quasi-experiment for 6 weeks, collecting pretests on prior instructional design knowledge & prior argumentation skills and individual metacognition as covariates, screen recording of online whiteboard-based argumentation activities, and group argumentative reports. Using MANCOVA and epistemic network analysis (ENA), this study drew the following conclusions: (1) Compared to the conventional discussion, TAP and AVD scaffolds respectively activated prominently more self-regulation and co-regulation. However, in socially shared regulation, there was no significant difference between the two scaffolds and the conventional discussion; (2) The TAP and AVD scaffolds significantly enhanced students' written argument skills compared to the conventional discussion, but no significant difference existed in the TAP and AVD scaffolds for improving students' written argument skills since the AVD scaffold evoked a great deal of ineffective co-regulation; (3) In the claim phase, the TAP scaffold activated a stronger connection between co-regulation and socially shared regulation than the other two scaffolds, while the AVD scaffold had a connection between self-regulation and socially shared regulation that was stronger than the conventional discussion and as strong as the TAP scaffold. In the justification phase, the AVD scaffold showed a far stronger connection between self-regulation and co-regulation, while the TAP scaffold illustrated a stronger connection between co-regulation and socially shared regulation. In the rebuttal phase, all three scaffolds showed the strongest connection between self-regulation and co-regulation. This study has implications for effectively using online whiteboards to support productive argumentation, in turn boosting argumentation skills along with regulation characteristics of productive argumentation.
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This study sought to investigate the nuances in predictive relationships existing among teaching presence, cognitive presence and social presence as well as learner presence in the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework towards online course satisfaction. The study is necessitated by the deficiency of current literature in providing information on the nuances in interaction among the three original presences and learner presence, prior to the final determination of online course satisfaction. Thus, the study adopted a survey design and collected data via a questionnaire from 347 postgraduate students on an online database course. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling was used to validate a definite model on the predictive relationships existing among teaching presence, cognitive presence, social presence, learner presence and online course satisfaction. Results from the structural model analysis proved a statistically significant predictive relationship between learner presence and the three other presences (i.e. cognitive presence, social presence and teaching presence). Other relationships established include social presence and cognitive presence; social presence and teaching presence. Finally, online course satisfaction was predicted by social presence and teaching presence. Based on the findings it was recommended that institutions that offer online courses should device concrete strategies that promote social presence and teaching presence since these variables are precursors to online course satisfaction. Finally, the design of online courses should be effective and learner-centred to attract the learner since learner presence determines all the other three ‘presences’ in online learning environment.
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Though peer assessment has been widely recognized as an effective teaching approach to develop learners’ critical thinking, pedagogical strategies and analysis of students’ peer assessment at the group level but not individual level are underexplored. Group assessment is emphasized in this study by focusing on assessing peer-group work. In the context of 40 student teachers participating in online group assessment activities, this study revealed critical thinking patterns and their correlation with group performances by content analysis and epistemic network analysis (ENA). The results showed that participants’ critical thinking in group assessment activities mainly stayed at the level of understand. The high-score groups’ critical thinking had more connections between understand and evaluate, while the low-score groups’ critical thinking had more connections between recognize and understand, and understand and analyse. In addition, the high- and low-score groups showed different characteristics of critical thinking at different stages and different tasks of group assessment activity. Diversified and developmental critical thinking patterns could be found in the high-score groups, while the low-score groups tended to maintain single and fixed critical thinking patterns. Finally, the discussion and suggestions of intervention for critical thinking development of high- and low-score groups are provided to help design and implement online collaborative learning activities and group assessment activities in the future.
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Citation Excerpt :
In recent years, coding schemes have also been used in automated content analyses for the purpose of learning analytics dashboard development2 (Farrow et al., 2021; Lee et al., 2022; Neto et al., 2018; O'Riordan et al., 2021; Rolim et al., 2019). Most relevant to our study, numerous empirical studies (cf. Appendix A) that refer to the practical implementation of the theoretical framework claim to investigate students' critical thinking (e.g., Chen et al., 2019; DuBois et al., 2019; Guo et al., 2021; Lee et al., 2022; Liu et al., 2022; Rolim et al., 2019). However, what critical thinking means in the CoI framework is insufficiently addressed in these studies.
The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework has been widely used in online teaching in higher education over the past twenty years. Its goal is to support students' professional development while fostering their critical thinking. In this paper, we thematically analyze how the framework authors' interpretations of critical thinking translate into the construct of cognitive presence—operationalized in the Practical inquiry model—and its commonly used coding scheme(s).
We show that the framework suffers from having become a “pragmatic” tool, thus compromising the intended dimension of fostering critical thinking. Furthermore, we draw attention to the “acting” role of coding schemes, which may have consequences for research and teaching practice.
In a first step, we examine the theoretical assumptions based on Lipman's and Garrison and Archer's ideas about the target category of critical thinking incorporated in the CoI framework. Although the framework is informed by a community of inquiry in Lipman's sense, we show that the chief characteristic of critical thinking associated with facilitating good judgment is not sufficiently addressed. Critical thinking is conceptualized more as confirmation of knowledge structures and problem-solving thinking within the Practical Inquiry model.
In a second step, we systematically analyze cognitive presence coding schemes as research tools for capturing critical thinking. We trace a narrowing view of critical thinking within the CoI framework and regarding the coding schemes that measure cognitive presence.
Consequently, we raise awareness of the risks in educational research arising from the complexity-reducing modeling and operationalizing of multifaceted educational concerns, such as critical thinking in a community of inquiry.

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A network-based analytic approach to uncovering the relationship between social and cognitive presences in communities of inquiry

Highlights

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

The community of inquiry model

Research questions

The data and course design

Research question 1

Research question 1

Conclusions and lines for further work

The Internet and Higher Education

The Internet and Higher Education

The Internet and Higher Education

The Internet and Higher Education

The Internet and Higher Education

The Internet and Higher Education

The Internet and Higher Education

Journal of Biochemical and Biophysical Methods

Computers & Education

The Internet and Higher Education

The Internet and Higher Education

The Internet and Higher Education

The Internet and Higher Education

Computers in Human Behavior

Computers & Education

Computers & Education

The Internet and Higher Education

The development of a community of inquiry over time in an online course: Understanding the progression and integration of social, cognitive and teaching presence

Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks

Three generations of distance education pedagogy

The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning

Assessing teaching presence in a computer conferencing context

Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks

Network analysis of knowledge construction in asynchronous learning networks

Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks

Epistemic network analysis and topic modeling for chat data from collaborative learning environment