LA-CoI: Representation of a Community of Inquiry

Many academic programs are now being offered as online-based courses. Online-based learning has many advantages over face-to-face-learning, but also offers some challenges. Among others, online- based learning may lead to isolated learning that may severely reduce the quality of learning of students. Online-based learning frameworks therefore try to foster a cooperative atmosphere among students and teachers that supports intensive communication and cooperation as an important precondition for learning. The Community of Inquiry is such an established framework that describes how cooperative online-based learning should be organized. However, it is often difficult for teachers objectively investigating whether they were successful in building such a Community of Inquiry among their students in an online-based course. In this project, we will thus investigate whether it is possible to automatically analyze to which extent the Community of Inquiry was established in an online-based course. We will develop concepts for student dashboards and teacher dashboards that will visualize the degree of Community of Inquiry that was reached. We will also investigate whether these dashboards have an effect on student self- regulation and co-regulation and on learning in general. The projects will mostly use anonymized log- data from learning management systems to quantify the Community of Inquiry.

Numerous academic programs are now offered as online-based programs. Online learning has many advantages over traditional face-to-face teaching but also presents some challenges. For instance, online learning can lead to isolated learning, which can significantly negatively impact the quality of learning. Current learning theories and frameworks therefore focus on fostering a cooperative learning atmosphere between students and instructors. Such an atmosphere is an essential prerequisite for collaborative learning. The Community of Inquiry framework is an internationally recognized framework that describes how cooperative online learning processes should be organized. However, instructors often find it difficult to objectively assess whether they have successfully created a Community of Inquiry in their online course. In this project, we investigated whether it is possible to automatically measure the degree of Community of Inquiry in an online course. First, we developed a standardized German-language questionnaire to measure the Community of Inquiry. We demonstrated that students' social presence-their sense of learning together as part of a group-can be measured and represented through six indicators. These indicators can be derived from log data and social network analysis using data from the learning management system. They could be displayed to instructors in real time via a teacher dashboard. Building on this, we showed that such teacher dashboards could indeed serve as valuable tools for instructors. Additionally, we developed machine learning approaches to automatically determine the degree of cognitive presence from students' written contributions. This methodology is more accurate than previous approaches. Finally, we found that existing coding schemes for measuring cognitive presence are insufficient to adequately capture students' critical thinking. Overall, our research enabled the development and refinement of methods for measuring social and cognitive presence, as well as the formulation of recommendations for effective online pedagogy.