Running head : COI AND LEARNING PRESENCE Learning Presence as a Moderator of Cognitive Presence in the Community of Inquiry Model

This study of over 2000 US college students examines the Community of Inquiry framework (CoI) in its capacity to describe and explain differences in learning outcomes in hybrid and fully online learning environments. We hypothesize that the CoI model’s theoretical constructs of presence reflect educational effectiveness in a variety of environments, and that online learner self-regulation, a construct that we label “learning presence” moderates relationships of the other components within the CoI model. Consistent with previous research (e.g., Means, Toyama, Murphy, Bakia & Jones, 2009; Shea & Bidjerano, 2011) we found evidence that students in online and blended courses rank the modalities differently with regard to quality of teaching, social, and cognitive presence. Differences in help seeking behavior, an important component of self-regulated learning, were found as well. In addition, results suggest teaching presence and social presence have a differential effect on cognitive presence, depending upon learner’s online self-regulatory cognitions and behaviors, i.e. their learning presence. These results also suggest a compensation effect in which greater self regulation is required to attain cognitive presence in the absence of sufficient teaching and social presence. Recommendations for future research and practice are included. COI AND LEARNING PRESENCE 3 Cognitive Presence in The community of Inquiry Model as a Function of Self-regulated Learning Between the fall 2008 and fall 2009 academic years more than one million new college students in the United States took an online course for the first time. Adding this number of students to online education in a single year, an increase of more than 20%, represents a milestone of sorts. The addition of these new learners is the largest single-year numerical increase since such data have been collected, bringing the total number of online students to more than 5.5 million (Allen & Seaman, 2010). The current growth rate among online students is more than ten times the growth rate in higher education generally, which saw an increase of less than 2% overall. The data suggest that online education continues to grow phenomenally with about 30% of all US college students taking at least one online course (Allen & Seaman, 2010). Other research suggests that this growth is likely to continue and that we may see as many as 50% of college students in online courses by 2014 (Christensen, Horn, Caldera & Soares, 2011). In addition to the millions of students in fully online courses, we are now seeing growth in the numbers of students enrolled in blended or hybrid courses in which part of the instruction is carried out online with a reduced portion remaining in the classroom. Some forecast (Watson, 2008) that this sector will grow even faster than fully online education, especially in pre-college settings. The present study seeks to understand the experiences of these many millions of students, and the millions more predicted to follow them, from both conceptual and empirical perspectives. Given the ongoing growth of online and blended education, it is crucial that we gain insights into successful learners engaged in these modalities and begin to develop a profile of how people learn online. We know that online learning is similar to and yet distinct from COI AND LEARNING PRESENCE 4 classroom learning. Clearly the absence of the dynamic of face-to-face interaction represents a change and we know that for most students online education is carried out in an asynchronous internet-based format. The US Department of Education reports, for example, that more than 11,200 college level programs have been designed for delivery fully at a distance and that 98% of these use asynchronous internet-based technologies to some extent (Parsad & Lewis, 2008). There is a longstanding belief that distance education requires a greater degree of selfdirectedness and self-reliance and it seems probable that learners in asynchronous, largely textbased online courses face challenges requiring considerable persistence and determination. This belief is supported by data that has implications for the continued expansion of online learning. For example in a recent national study of online education (Allan & Seaman, 2010) a majority of institutions in the US reported that online learning requires more discipline on the part of the student and that this represents a barrier to continued growth of online education. The issues of online student discipline, self-directedness, and self-reliance are important factors and in this paper we will look at possible distinctions confronting fully online learners and learner who enroll in blended courses. If we are to understand how people learn online, how it may be improved, and how and whether it should continue to grow in the now prevailing method (asynchronous, internet based) it is important to frame these issues within a model that allows for more coherent description and explanation. We posit that two existing theories provide this framing, the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model and self-regulated learning (SRL) theory. The community of inquiry framework The Community of Inquiry model outlines the behaviors and processes required to enable knowledge construction in asynchronous online environments through the development of COI AND LEARNING PRESENCE 5 various forms of “presence”. The CoI framework discusses three forms of presence: teaching-, social-, and cognitive presence (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2001). The model articulates these conceptual components considered foundational to successful knowledge building in collaborative online environments. The framework theorizes online learning as a result of collaborative work among active participants in learning communities characterized by instructional orchestration suitable to the online environments (teaching presence) and a supportive mutually respectful online setting (social presence). The teaching presence construct describes online instructional skills such as organization, design, discourse facilitation, and direct instruction (Anderson, Rourke, Garrison, & Archer, 2001; Garrison & Arbaugh, 2007) and articulates the specific behaviors likely to result in a productive community of inquiry (e.g., Shea, Li, Swan, & Pickett, 2005). Social presence reflects online discourse that promotes positive affect, interaction, and cohesion (Rourke, Anderson, Garrison, & Archer, 1999) and supports a collegial, collaborative environment. The model also references cognitive presence, a multivariate measure of significant learning that results from the cyclical process of practical inquiry within such a community of learners. The specific form of interaction within the cognitive presence construct thus reflects a pragmatic view of learning (Dewey, 1933; Lipmann, 2003; Pierce, 1955). However the model as a whole can be seen to articulate the knowledge construction features of Larreamendy-Joerns and Leinhardt’s (2006) “epistemic engagement” model with teaching presence serving the overarching instructional function and social presence supporting productive participation. In a recent review of the research on CoI, Garrison and Arbaugh (2007) concluded that there was a need for more quantitatively-oriented studies, more cross-disciplinary studies, and opportunities for identifying factors that moderate or extend the relationship between the COI AND LEARNING PRESENCE 6 framework's components and course outcomes. The study presented here attempts to build on these recommendations with a quantitative approach to an analysis of thousands of students studying across many different disciplines. Seeking to add to the literature on CoI in the context of the most recent, rigorous, and comprehensive review of online learning (Means, et. al, 2009), results presented here extend the framework’s components with an additional focus on learners and their differential capacity to self-regulate in online and blended settings. Self-regulated learning Despite the increasing interest in the application of the CoI framework as an overarching conceptual model explaining the nature of asynchronous distance learning, with some exceptions (Shea & Bidjerano, 2010; Shea et al., in press) very few studies have taken into account individual-level determinants, that can play an equally important role in students’ perceptions of cognitive engagement and gains. The notion that individual difference characteristics interact with instructional environment in intricate ways to produce specific learning outcomes is not new. The aptitude-treatment interaction framework, described by Cronbach and Snow (1977), suggests that “one size does not fit all” for the effectiveness of any instructional method or strategy depends largely on the individual attributes of the learner. Neither instruction in isolation, nor learners’ characteristics by themselves predict learning, rather the combination of the two results in optimal learning outcomes (Snow, 1989). Although the ATI framework has been originally developed to explain the complex interplay between instruction, referred as to treatment, and student ability, it is currently agreed upon that the paradigm can be extended to include a broad range of interactions between individual traits (intelligence, learning style, personality, motivation, effort, self-efficacy, meta-cognition, self-regulation) and the quality of COI AND LEARNING PRESENCE 7 learning environment (teacher, teaching style, instructional methods, strategies, social milieu, instructional mediums) with their effect on learning and educational outcomes. Of the aforementioned person-level characteristics, individual differences in selfregulated learning have emerged as a powerful explanatory mechanism of the relationship between instruction and educational outcome. Hence, the second conceptual framework that may provide guidance into the experience of onli