Fostering Cognitive Presence in Online Courses: A Systematic Review (2008-2020)

Within the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, cognitive presence has been central to success in higher education settings. This systematic review examined 24 articles published between 2008-2020 that empirically analyzed cognitive presence in online courses. We share the patterns that emerged regarding the interplay between teaching and cognitive presence and social and cognitive presence. We also explore how the four phases of cognitive presence—triggering event, exploration, integration, and resolution—were evident within specific instructional activities. We conclude with implications for practice that will be helpful for course instructors and designers seeking to foster greater cognitive presence within their online courses

A Mixed Methods Approach To Investigating Cognitive Load And Cognitive Presence In An Online And Face-To-Face College Algebra Course

Most research on Cognitive Load Theory (Sweller, 1988) has uncovered many instructional design considerations for learning complex tasks. Additionally, the Community of Inquiry (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) framework describes many of the learning experiences in online education. A gap existed in the literature for investigating cognitive load over the duration of a college algebra course and for investigating the relationship between cognitive load and cognitive presence. This research study has addressed this gap by investigating cognitive load and cognitive presence in an online and face-to-face college algebra course. The results of this study revealed that face-to-face students earned statistically significant higher final course grades and homework grades than the online students. The face-to-face math course was slightly more efficient because it produced learners who exerted similar cognitive load as learners in the online course but the learners in the face-to-face earned higher performance score. Online discussion prompts that ask student to apply their solution or defend their solution engaged students in cognitive presence differently. When students were prompted to apply their solution to a real world scenario, most students reached resolution in their initial posts, but they were often not cognitively present in their follow-up posts. When students were prompted to provide a defense of their solution, most of the posts demonstrated cognitive presence, but not as many individual students reached resolution. Additionally, students progressed through the stages of cognitive presence when an instructor asked them a specific question about their math problem or real life scenario in a timely manner. When instructors post questions to their students that directly ask for an application of their hypothesis or an explanation how they arrived at their hypothesis, students can reach the highest stage of cognitive presence. When instructors post messages that reach the highest stage of cognitive presence, students do not post messages that reach the highest stage of cognitive presence. Lastly, this study did not find a strong linear relationship between cognitive presence and cognitive load

COGNITIVE PRESENCE IN PEER FACILITATED ASYNCHRONOUS ONLINE DISCUSSION: THE PATTERNS AND HOW TO FACILITATE

This study, in the context of peer-facilitated asynchronous online discussion, explored the characteristics and patterns of students’ cognitive presence, and examined the practices that aim to enhance cognitive presence development. Participants were 53 students from a graduate-level online course that focused on the integration of educational technologies. Data were collected from discussion transcripts, student survey, student artifacts, and researcher’s observations. Results demonstrated four phases of students’ cognitive presence: Triggering event, Exploration, Integration, and Resolution. Among the four phases, students’ cognitive presence tended to aggregate at the middle phases: Integration and Exploration. Percentage of the Resolution was very low. The distribution of students’ discussion behaviors further revealed: a) the hierarchical relationship between the four phases: Integration and Resolution involved a higher-level of cognitive engagement, and Triggering event and Exploration involved a lower-level of cognitive engagement; b) the phase of Resolution heavily relied on experiment, while the other three phases heavily relied on making use of personal experience; c) creating of cognitive presence occurred in both the private space of individual activities and the shared space of having dialogues. The conversation analysis of threads and episodes explored the temporal evolvement of cognitive presence. The results showed that, in an ongoing discussion, students’ cognitive presence evolved in a non-linear way, rather than strictly phase by phase as suggested by the PI model. Experiments were designed and conducted to determine the effects of two pedagogical interventions – 1) providing guidance on peer facilitation techniques; 2) asking students to label their posts. The results showed that the Intervention 1 and the combination of two interventions credibly improved students’ cognitive presence. They were especially effective in improving Integration, a higher level of cognitive presence. After having added Intervention 2, cognitive presence increased from the first-half to the second-half semester, although the improvement was not found to be statistically credible. This study confirmed the close association between and among cognitive presence, social interaction, and peer facilitation. The results clearly showed that Intervention 1 – providing guidance on peer facilitation credibly improved students’ social interaction and peer facilitation. However, Mixed findings were obtained for Intervention 2 – asking students to label their posts. It was found that Intervention 2 positively increased students’ social interaction. However, it did not show any impact on students’ peer facilitation behaviors. It is also worth noting that the effect of the combination of two interventions was much larger than any single one of them. Conversation analysis was conducted to zoom in on the dynamic process of discussion. The cases revealed that when students were provided with the guidance on peer facilitation techniques, they tended to use a variety of facilitation techniques in a strategic way to help peers to achieve a sustained and deeper-level conversation. Compared to the control group, the students in the treatment group showed more peer facilitation behaviors, which led to more conversations and more higher-level cognitive presence. This study has unpacked the complexity of students’ cognitive presence in a peer-facilitated discussion environment, especially when students are coached in performing teaching presence. The results shed light on the pedagogical practices and strategies of creating an online learning community that incubates rich cognitive presence. Finally, implications are discussed for the research and practices in online instruction and discussion analytics

Replicating the Use of a Cognitive Presence Measurement Tool

This paper is a report of the replication of a seminal study on cognitive presence in computer mediated conferencing (CMC) by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2001). A comparison of cognitive presence coding by three different researchers is also demonstrated. The study reignites debates about what constitutes the segment of CMC data to be coded and the objectivity of this type of data

An investigation of teaching, social and cognitive presence in online learning

The purpose of this investigation was to explore the Community of Inquiry model (CoI) elements of teaching, social, and cognitive presence were mostly present in online learning environments. A quantitative approach was employed, and data were collected via survey from eighty-nine respondents. The findings revealed that teaching presence was the most influential element and evident in the design and facilitation of the courses, as instructors provided clear instructions and timely feedback. Social presence was evident through the use of discussion forums and group projects, which allowed students to interact and build relationships with one another. Finally, cognitive presence was evident through the use of reflective activities and challenging assignments, which encouraged students to think critically and engage with the course material. Overall, the results suggest that a balance of teaching, social, and cognitive presence is essential for effective online learning environments. Instructors should design courses that promote interaction and collaboration among students, provide clear instructions and feedback, and incorporate activities that encourage students to think deeply about the course material

An Examination of Cognitive Presence and Learning Outcome in an Asynchronous Discussion Forum

Web-based learning progresses as access to the Internet grows. As learners and educators in virtual learning communities, we strive for ways to measure how well teachers teach and learners learn. While the literature is replete with articles and books discussing online learning from the perspective of social and teaching presence, there are few studies that examine the relationship between cognitive presence and learning effectiveness in an online environment. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between cognitive presence and learning outcome in an asynchronous discussion forum. Thus, this study examined performance in an online course in relation to student interaction and level of cognitive presence in the course. The data were collected from students enrolled in 10 sections of an online class taught at a large public university in the Southeastern United States. The study was mixed-method in nature. It consisted both of qualitative content analysis and descriptive statistics with Pearson correlations between the dependent variable (student course module grades) and the independent variables (maximum levels of cognitive presence, number of messages and message lengths). The study resulted in two key theoretical contributions. The first is that maximum level of cognitive presence is a better indicator of student learning than mean level of cognitive presence. The results of the study indicate that students achieved mastery of the subject matter over time. Typically cognitive presence has been measured as a mean score for a course. This strategy is akin to giving the student a pre-test on a body of content at the beginning of the lesson, and a post test at the end, and then averaging these two to determine the student’s grade. Doing so seems to ignore, or at least diminish the fact that learning occurs over time. Student mastery of a content is a better indicator of learning than student progress. Thus, this study suggests that a more appropriate measure of student learning, in terms of cognitive presence, is the maximum level reached by every student, rather than the mean level of all students. The second theoretical contribution is that in on-line learning, a student displaying the cognitive presence “Resolution” stage in a discussion may inhibit others from displaying that stage. When a student has posted a message at the resolution stage during a discussion other students are more likely to respond with messages like “I agree” than they are to restate the resolution stage message. The “I agree” type message would not be coded at the resolution stage, thus the student who posted that message would not be seen to have reached that stage, when in fact, he or she may well have done so. This leads to a faulty perception of the overall level of cognitive presence. It may be difficult to control for this inhibitory effect but some creative structuring of course content and assignments should make it possible. Future studies addressing cognitive presence in online learning environments should take both of these ideas into consideration

Crowdsourcing Cognitive Presence: A Quantitative Content Analysis of a K12 Educator MOOC Discussion Forum

Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offer participants opportunities to engage with content and discussion forums similar to other online courses. Pedagogical components of MOOCs and the nature of learning are worth of examining due to issues involving scale, interaction and the role of the instructor (Ross, Sinclair, Know, Bayne & McLeod, 2014). The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework provides a basis for measuring cognitive presence in online discussion forums. As voluntary point of entry to a community of learners, it is important to consider the nature of participant contributions in terms of cognitive presence. This study focused on an educator MOOC because MOOCs have been proposed as an efficient vehicle for providing professional development due to the significant self-identification of participants as educators (Ho et al. 2014). Participant attributes have been categorized, however the discussion forum is difficult to study on a massive scale (Kizilcec, Piech, & Schulz, 2013). Automated measures of cognitive presence may not provide the full view of learning behaviors implicit in messages posted to the forums (Wong, Pursel, Divinsky & Jansen, 2015). To address this gap, the forum messages were hand-coded and analyzed using quantitative content analysis (Neuendorf, 2002). The study found that the measure of exploration increased over the duration of the course. Viewing cognitive presence over time provided a new metaphor for explaining the proportions of cognitive presence in the discussion forum of an educator MOOC. This finding suggests that increased instructor presence during the later stages of the course may increase cognitive presence over time (Akyol & Garrison, 2007; Garrison & Cleveland-Innes, 2005)

Critical Thinking and Computer Conferencing: A Model and Tool to Assess Cognitive Presence

This article describes a practical approach to judging the nature and quality of critical discourse in a computer conference. A model of a critical community of inquiry frames the research. A core concept in defining a community of inquiry is cognitive presence. In turn, the practical inquiry model operationalizes cognitive presence for the purpose of developing a tool to assess critical discourse and reflection. The authors present encouraging empirical findings related to an attempt to create an efficient and reliable instrument to assess the nature and quality of critical discourse and thinking in a text-based educational context. Finally, the authors suggest that cognitive presence (i.e., critical, practical inquiry) can be created and supported in a computer-conference environment with appropriate teaching and social presence

Evaluating Students’ Learning Experiences Using Course Management System in a Blended Learning

One of the major software used in today’s classroom are Course Management Systems (CMS). There is currently little research regarding the learning experience of students using CMS like Moodle in a blended learning environment. Effective learning environments give students a chance to learn better and faster. Understanding the students’ learning experience in a blended course using a CMS is the first step to determine how to best engage students. It assumes that good learning environments are achieved through three factors which are Cognitive Presence, Teaching Presence, and Social Presence. This study used a set of questionnaire to evaluate students’ learning experience for 107 students in blended learning. Correlation analysis has been used to find the relationship between Cognitive Presence, Teaching Presence, Social Presence and learning experience of students who use CMS in blended learning. The findings of this research study show that there is a significant correlation among Cognitive Presence, Teaching Presence, Social Presence and the overall learning experience using Moodle in blended learning. However, the level of Social Presence is lower in comparison with Teaching Presence and Cognitive Presence