No abstract

In online learning research, the theoretical community of inquiry framework has been used extensively to analyze processes of inquiry among learners and instructors within a community. This paper examines a special case of community of inquiry consisting of only one learner and one instructor. Together they engage in an online coaching discourse to form a relationship of inquiry. Within these relationships, coachees pass through processes of practical inquiry process while a coach supports the process. In this study, a framework and coding scheme were developed for use in a transcript coding procedure including 3,109 messages from an online coaching case in math for K-12 students. It is found that the elements of cognitive, teaching, and social presence, as well as the newly proposed emotional presence, which outlines a community of inquiry, comprise an effective structure for the analysis of one-to-one online coaching environments. The findings of this exploratory study suggest that a relationship of inquiry framework has the potential to support development of one-to-one online learning.

Emotions have been confirmed to be a critical component of the process of learning. In the online Community of Inquiry theoretical framework, and the recently suggested online Relationship of Inquiry framework, emotions are considered a subsection of social presence. In this study, the concept of emotional presence is examined. This examination occurs within the Relationship of Inquiry framework, developed to analyze one-to-one online coaching. A survey of online coaches and a transcript coding procedure from the online coaching service Math Coach provide the data for the study. The results indicate that a Relationship of Inquiry framework consisting of cognitive, social, teaching, and emotional presence enhances the exploration of one-to-one online coaching settings. The interpretation of these results identifies emotional presence as an essential and distinct part of one-to-one online math coaching.

No abstract

There are comparatively few studies on one-to-one tutoring in online settings, even though it has been found to be an effective model. This paper explores student-student online coaching from the coach perspective. The empirical case is the project Math Coach, where K-12 students are coached by teacher students using instant messaging. This research is an adaptation of the community of inquiry model to an online coaching setting, which we refer to as a relationship of inquiry. The adapted model was used to gain a better understanding of the practice of online coaching by exploring the extent to which cognitive, social, and teaching presence exist in this case of online coaching. A relationship of inquiry survey was distributed to and answered by all active coaches (n=41). The adapted cognitive, social and teaching presence measures achieved an acceptable level of reliability. Differences between three presences, and their respective sub-categories, demonstrate a unique pattern of interaction between coaches and coachees in the online coaching environment. Findings suggest the online inquiry model fits as well for a relationship of inquiry as it does for a community of inquiry. The model provides valuable information for better understanding of online coaching.

This study compares and contrasts four international faculty development programs for blended learning in order to understand the benefits, challenges, lessons learned, and recommendations from such initiatives. The benefits identified for faculty members, who participated in these programs, were that they became more reflective of their teaching practice and began to make a role adjustment from being a content provider to a designer and facilitator of learning for students. The biggest challenge appeared to be a lack of common institutional definition and understanding of blended learning as well as a lack of time and resources to support faculty in the redesign of their courses. With regards to lessons learned, each program emphasized the need for all institutional stakeholders to be involved in supporting the initiative and that blended learning does not simply imply adding digital technologies to an existing face-to-face course. The key recommendation from this study is that a faculty development program for blended learning needs to be clearly aligned with the institution's vision and mission.

Online tutors play a critical role in e-learning and need to have an appropriate set of skills in addition to subject matter expertise. This paper explores how digital badges can be used to encourage the development of online tutoring skills. Based on previous research, we defined three digital badges, which are examples of essential tutoring skills. These skills were self-assessed during two weeks by online tutors in K-12 mathematics, who also wrote a self-reflection based on their experience. The digital badges motivated tutors to reflect on online tutoring practices. The tutors described that they gained a more detailed understanding of the tutoring process when continuously analyzing ongoing conversations. However, it was a challenge for the tutors to balance the private activity, reflection on tutoring skills, and the social activity, communication with the K-12 students. It is essential to take into account when tutors will have time to reflect, for example, by scheduling time for reflection or enabling opportunities for reflection that is flexible in time. A challenge for further research is to better understand the potential benefits of different types of badges.

PostprintThis is the accepted version of a paper published in The Internet and higher education. This paper has been peer-reviewed but does not include the final publisher proof-corrections or journal pagination. The aim of this paper is to describe student--student online coaching, defined as "an online service where a student gets support on a specific subject matter from a more experienced student". Student--student online coaching emphasizes learning a subject matter by giving a student the opportunity to get coached by a coach, i.e. a more experienced student. Online coaching is encouraged by an organization, but the control of learning is primarily in the hands of the student.An example of online coaching is described, i.e. math coaching by instant messaging. A key challenge for coaches is to interpret the students' competence level, despite that they often do not know the students beforehand, in order to coach on a level that is within their zone of proximal development.