Using Communities of Inquiry Online to Perform Tasks of Higher Order Learning

Abstract

In this chapter, the community of inquiry model is used as an analytical framework, along with quantitative content analysis and social network analysis, in order to understand how social and cognitive presence and group structure are affected by the type of learning task and social networks. Discussion forums were employed focusing on three types of tasks: analyzing, evaluating, and creating. Over a period of three academic years, a total of 96 discussion forums were analyzed. Results show how social and cognitive presence are affected by social group structure and centrality of coordinators, depending of type of learning task.