Designing for Engagement: Community of Inquiry in Practice

How can educators capitalize on networked environments to develop effective online learning experiences? What are the design and facilitation strategies necessary to support authentic engagement, peer-learning, and deep understanding? Presenters will explore these questions through practical examples, using Garrison's Community of Inquiry as a guiding framework. The COI model integrates three key elements that foster robust virtual learning communities. To illustrate how these three "presences"—teaching, social, cognitive—come together to support student engagement, the presenters will demonstrate and discuss field-tested examples of online collaboration, detailing the strategies employed to facilitate learning.

OBJECTIVES: Understand the elements of the Community of Inquiry framework through analysis of real-world examples * Understand the ways in which the COI components interact to best support online student learning * Discuss practical design and facilitation strategies that support virtual collaborative learning.