The Community of Inquiry Framework in Virtual Teacher Training: Student Perceptions and Didactic Strategies to Enhance Engagement

The University of Education Upper Austria offers Bachelor and Master programmes in Vocational Education with planned distance learning components. These programmes have been evaluated since their introduction (see Cechovsky & Pichler, 2023). The results have shown that social interaction in virtual space is a critical factor. It is therefore important to take this component into account from the outset in the didactic design of the courses. The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework by Garrison, Anderson and Archer (1999) is a didactic model that was developed for digital university teaching and explicitly takes the social component into account.

By implementing the principles of the framework in digital teaching, optimal conditions are to be created to promote critical thinking. The CoI framework comprises social presence, cognitive presence and teaching presence. These presences should be specifically developed in the online courses in order to enable successful learning (Vaughan et al., 2013, p. 10). To consider the framework and the needs of students with regard to social interaction in virtual teaching at the University of Education Upper Austria, the following question i addressed:

How can online courses be designed for vocational education students, considering their individual needs and the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework?

To answer the research question, two group discussions were conducted with Bachelor's and Master's students in addition to a literature review. Group discussions can be used to collect the collective opinions of several people at the same time (Hussy et al., 2013, p. 231). The aim is to gain a deeper insight into the participants' lives (Kühn & Koschel, 2017, p. 40). The results help to increase the quality of virtual teaching in vocational teacher training programmes and thus promote social presence, teaching presence and cognitive presence and a shared metacognition in line with the CoI framework.

References

Cechovsky, N. & Pichler, J. (2023). Online-Lehre in Lehramtsstudien der Berufsbildung. Methodik, Didaktik und Gestaltung der Lehrveranstaltungen. In Pausits, A., Fellner, M., Gornik, E., Ledermüller, K., & Thaler, B. (Eds.), Uncertainty in Higher Education: Hochschulen in einer von Volatilität geprägten Welt (p. 87–100). Münster: Waxmann.
Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T. & Archer, W. (1999). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The internet and higher education, 2(2–3), 87–105.
Garrison, D. R. & Arbaugh, J. B. (2007). Researching the community of inquiry framework: Review, issues, and future directions. The Internet and higher education, 10(3), 157–172.
Hussy, W., Schreier, M. & Echterhoff, G. (2013). Forschungsmethoden in Psychologie und Sozialwissenschaften für Bachelor (2. Aufl.). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
Kühn, T. & Koschel, K. V. (2017). Gruppendiskussionen. Ein Praxis-Handbuch (2. Aufl.). Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M. & Garrison, D. R. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press.