Learners' Perspectives on what is Missing from Online Learning: Interpretations through the Community of Inquiry Framework

Abstract

Despite the success that instructors and learners often enjoy with online university courses, learners have also reported that they miss face-to-face contact when learning online. The purpose of this inquiry was to identify learners' perceptions of what is missing from online learning and provide recommendations for how we can continue to innovate and improve the online learning experience. The inquiry was qualitative in nature and conducted from a constructivist perspective. Ten learners who had indicated that they missed and/ or would have liked more face-to-face contact following their participation in an online course were interviewed to elicit responses that would provide insights into what it is they miss about face-to-face contact when learning online. Five themes emerged: robustness of online dialogue, spontaneity and improvisation, perceiving and being perceived by the other, getting to know others, and learning to be an online learner. Garrison and colleagues' (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) community of inquiry framework was used to interpret the findings.

Beyond Social Presence: Facelessness and the Ethics of Asynchronous Online Education

“…I couldn't put any names with any of them, and sometimes, you know, there were two people who had the same names and it was difficult to tell who was who. (p. 125) Similarly, Stodel, Thompson, and MacDonald (2006) dismissed comments from learners about the facelessness of classmates in online courses with the conclusion that the issue can be rectified by simply "[i]ncreasing social presence" (p. 14).…”

“…In her study of an online adult education course, Conrad (2002) found that students exhibited not disinhibition but "an increased sense of inhibition" (p. 206, emphasis in original) -that is, an excessive "niceness" that had them attending scrupulously, even compulsively, to matters of netiquette in order to avoid conflict. Describing the phenomenon, a student in a study by Stodel, Thompson, and MacDonald (2006) highlighted the resulting banality of much online discussion: "The constant 'Good work', 'Good thought'. What really detracted from the so-called reality of the interactions was this virtual sense of touchy-feely camaraderie.…”

Social Aspects of CSCL Environments: A Research Framework

“…This relationship has been suggested by many social presence researchers, most notably Tu (2000): "Social presence is required to enhance and foster online social interaction, which is the major vehicle of social learning" (p. 27). Inspired by the work of Garrison et al (2000), Stodel, Thompson, and MacDonald (2006) asserted that the function of social presence is "to facilitate the attainment of the cognitive learning objectives by supporting critical thinking in a community of learners, as well as the affective learning objectives by making the group interactions enjoyable and rewarding" (p. 3). Tu and McIsaac (2002) found social presence to be vital for influencing online interaction.…”

Expanding Learning Presence to Account for the Direction of Regulative Intent: Self-, Co- and Shared Regulation in Online Learning

“…There is a growing body of literature that employs the Community of Inquiry (CoI) frameworkdeveloped by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000)-to investigate and explain the effectiveness of online teaching and learning (see Arbaugh, 2008;Benbunan-Fich & Hiltz, 2003;Boston et al 2009;DiRienzo & Gregory, 2014;Kang & Im, 2013;Stodel, Thompson, MacDonald, 2006). This framework asserts that successful online learning occurs through the cultivation of three forms of presence: social presence, teaching presence, and cognitive presence.…”