Jennifer C Richardson

Purdue University West Lafayette | Purdue · College of Education

As online learning opportunities continue to grow it is important to continually consider instructor practices. Using case study methodology this study conceptualizes instructor presence, the intersection of social and teaching presence as defined within the Community of Inquiry literature, and is based in the implementation phase of online courses...

The Community of Inquiry (CoI) model views the online learning experience as a function of the relationship between three elements: social presence, teaching presence, and cognitive presence. The proposed panel and chapter will focus on how the CoI framework can be used to guide the design and implementation of online courses through the explicatio...

Social presence, the ability to perceive others in an online environment, has been shown to impact student motivation and participation, actual and perceived learning, course and instructor satisfaction, and retention in online courses; yet very few researchers have attempted to look across contexts, disciplinary areas, or measures of social presen...

Employing phenomenological techniques this qualitative study investigates perceptions of collaborative relationships between instructional designers and faculty at an R1 university. While past research has considered the growing involvement of instructional designers in course development, and knowledge and skills expected from an instructional des...

During the 2018 Professors in Instructional Design (PIDT) Conference, faculty representing over a dozen institutions met to discuss curricular initiatives that were being implemented across programs, and the challenges and benefits of these initiatives. The discussion focused on several areas, including: interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary programs...

To understand the longstanding issue of low training transfer rates, in this study we explore the understudied role of trainee attitude in an authentic educational training programme comprising participants with diverse international backgrounds. We employed a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design and conceptualised attitude as a multi-dimens...

In this chapter, we highlight the stories of young engineering professionals in a higher education setting in the West Indies who are enrolled in an interdisciplinary course that explores issues pertaining to diversity, inclusion, and gender in the engineering profession. Within the classroom, student conceptualizations and narratives are powerful...

Interaction is an essential element of online learning and researchers had use Social Learning Analytics (SLA) to understand the characteristics of meaningful interaction. While the potential for network analysis in education (i.e., SLA) is valuable, limited research has considered how best to use this emerging field to inform meaningful interactio...

italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Contribution: The study characterizes aspects of cognitive and metacognitive dimensions of team cognition of software development teams in educational settings. Background: The software development industry requires software engineers and developers t...

The American Educational Research Association (AERA) is a research society that "strives to advance knowledge about education, to encourage scholarly inquiry related to education, and to promote the use of research to improve education and serve the public good" (2022). The association aims to encourage educational research studies and promote the...

Students’ extensive use of Facebook in their daily lives has led researchers to investigate the affordances of Facebook for educational purposes. To further the research into the use of Facebook to improve language teaching, we conducted a convergent parallel mixed-methods study to examine the use of Community of Inquiry-informed Facebook discussio...

The increase in online education creates a need to explore how learning outcomes, student satisfaction, and student perceptions about online courses are affected by prior online learning experiences. This study examined the role of prior online learning experience on students’ perceived cognitive presence, social presence, teaching presence, engage...

The Purdue Repository for Online Teaching and Learning (PoRTAL) was developed as an Open Educational Resource (OER) for graduate students and faculty in higher education settings to enhance their online teaching skills and strategies. The PoRTAL team used a design-based research approach (DBR; Wang & Hannafin, Educational Technology Research and De...

The COVID-19 pandemic forced institutions of higher education around the world to quickly transition to forms of distance education, including synchronous and asynchronous online learning. Often lacking conceptual, empirical, and practical understanding of online pedagogy, many institutions have met this endeavor with mixed success. It seems inevit...

The purpose of this study was to explore how students’ perceptions of the Community of Inquiry presences and their components influence their affective learning outcomes are varied across academic disciplines. Twenty-three undergraduate students were recruited from different academic disciplines, interviewed, and their data were analyzed using a co...

This multiple case study explores how instructors conceptualize and employ scaffolding in online courses. Participants included full time faculty (n = 4) who have designed and taught at least one online course within the past 12 months. Data sources included pre-interview surveys, semi-structured interviews, and online course observations. Data wer...

Large scale assessment data has many affordances but relying on test scores alone may not provide a full picture of complex thinking and reasoning. Emerging research has used process data to examine group problem solving. Process data captures individual, team, or country data, as well as important relationships and sequence patterns. We used proce...

Utilizando tres constructos interdependientes, la presencia social, cognitiva y docente, el marco de la Comunidad de Indagación es un modelo teórico de proceso del aprendizaje en línea. En específico, la presencia docente se divide en tres subelementos —a) facilitación del discurso, b) instrucción directa y c) diseño y organización instruccional— q...

The purpose of this qualitative research study was to investigate how instructional designers perceive and experience conflict in their collaborative work with faculty across higher education settings. Prior research studies have captured instructional designers’ perspectives on building and maintaining successful collaborations with faculty but ha...

On the eve of spring break March 2020, we received an emergency email from Purdue University’s Office of Teaching and Learning. We were invited to be part of the University’s contingency team planning for and developing resources to assist faculty with transitioning from face-to-face to emergency remote teaching and learning. Using the experience a...

Using a multiple case study approach, we interviewed 14 instructional designers working at different universities to explore the approaches and strategies they utilized when experiencing conflict with faculty. While past practitioner-based research has identified strategies instructional designers employ to cultivate effective and productive collab...

The ten research articles in this year’s issue showcased research devoted to advancing high-quality online learning around four themes: learner engagement, the use synchronous video-based communication to support teaching, instructors’ perspectives and experiences, and pedagogical recommendations.

This chapter presents a systematic review of 31 studies that focused on the ef- fect of using social network sites (SNSs) for educational purposes on students’ perceived learning and satisfaction. It was found that SNSs support these out- comes when guidance and rules are clearly specified to learners. A subset of the studies was also used for a me...

Using three interdependent constructs: social, cognitive, and teaching presence, the Community of Inquiry framework is a theoretical process model of online learning. Specifically, teaching presence contains three sub-elements—(a) facilitation of discourse, (b) direct instruction, and (c) instructional design and organization—that work together to...

The Community of Inquiry framework has been used in numerous studies, yet these studies rarely examine disciplinary differences as a potential factor in student outcomes. To address the research gap, this study examined the differences in students' perceived social, cognitive, and teaching presence and their predictive effects on students' affectiv...

Introduction to the Special Issue: Highlighting AERA’s Online Teaching and Learning SIG 2020

This thematic synthesis aims to analyze the qualitative evidence provided by earlier empirical studies to achieve a comprehensive and up-to-date understanding of the factors influencing students’ online learning experiences through the lens of the Community of Inquiry framework. Following a three-stage procedure specified by Thomas and Harden (2008...

This multiple case study investigates instructional designers’ perceptions of online course quality, their use of cognitive load strategies when designing online courses, and whether utilization of these strategies contribute to online course quality. The participants of this study were instructional designers (n = 5) who worked in various campus p...

Students’ goal-setting skills are highly related to their academic learning performance and level of motivation. A review of the literature demonstrated limited research on both applicable goal-setting strategies in higher education and the support of technology in facilitating goal-setting processes. Addressing these two gaps, this study explored...

The current meta-analysis examined the relationship between student outcomes and teaching presence, and its three sub-dimensions (i.e., design and organization, facilitation, and direct instruction) and identified the conditions that moderate the strength of the relationships. We retrieved 82 independent and dependent effect sizes from 30 studies....

At the 2019 annual meeting, the OTL SIG received 145 proposals from which 66 were selected to present. The articles in this special issue report on the research findings stemming from those proposals. It includes several articles concerned with quality in a variety of settings and from both instructor and student perspectives. Instructor perception...

Discussions regarding the instructional and learning value of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) include the question of whether or not MOOC learners gain much value, if any at all, and has been a continuing debate since MOOCs began. Skeptics argue that MOOCs lack academic rigor and are superficial, while proponents praise them as addressing impor...

Online higher education courses are often designed using a one-size-fits-all model that treats students as instructional users rather than participants who contribute according to their learning needs and interests. Although many scholars have discussed personalized learning as a means to customize instruction over the past three decades, few have...

This study investigated the structural relationships among online learners’ teaching, social and cognitive presence, engagement, and satisfaction. Data were collected from graduate students enrolled in an online graduate program at a large Midwestern public university through online surveys. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze th...

As the growth of online programs continues to rapidly accelerate, concern over retention is increasing. Models for understanding student persistence in the face-to-face environment are well established, however, the many of the variables in these constructs are not present in the online environment or they manifest in significantly different ways....

Introduction to Special Issue: AERA 2018 OTL SIG

The American Educational Research Association (AERA) is the premier association of educational research professionals. AERA supports 12 divisions and 150 Special Interest Groups (SIGs). One of the latter is the Special Interest Group on Online Teaching and Learning (SIG-OTL). SIG-OTL is a multi- disciplinary community of scholars focused on the cre...

This meta-analysis examined the magnitude of the relationship between the three presences of the Community of Inquiry in relation to student’s satisfaction and perceived learning in fully online environments. We retrieved 159 effect sizes from the 61 identified studies. Our findings illustrated that all of the presences individually predict the stu...

The Community of Inquiry framework posits that a meaningful educational experience consists of teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence. Garrison, Anderson, and Archer intentionally labeled the act of direct instruction, facilitating discourse, and designing instruction as teaching presence instead of teacher presence. This was la...

p class="3">This case study examined a team of instructors’ use of social presence, teaching presence, and attitudinal dissonance in a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) on Animal Behaviour and Welfare (ABW), designed to facilitate attitudinal learning. The study reviewed a team of six instructors’ use of social presence and teaching presence by app...

This chapter presents the theoretical and practical implications of research conducted on online learning communities at Purdue University using the Community of Inquiry lens. Specifically, highlights of eight studies conducted from 2013 to 2015 are presented. The context of the majority of the studies is the online Learning, Design and Technology...

Social presence theory was the term first proposed in 1976 to explain how telecommunications influence how people communicate (Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976). Short and colleagues (1976) defined social presence as the degree of salience (i.e., quality or state of being there) between two communicators using a communication medium. This theory b...

p class="2">As online learning continues to grow significantly, various efforts have been explored and implemented in order to improve the instructional experiences of students. Specifically, research indicates that how an instructor establishes his or her presence in an online environment can have important implications for the students’ overall l...

This study examines a MOOC instructor’s use of social presence, teaching presence, and dissonance for attitudinal change in a MOOC on Human Trafficking, designed to promote attitudinal change. Researchers explored the MOOC instructor’s use of social presence and teaching presence, using the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework as a lens, and examin...

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of stock-type horse show competitors' understanding of welfare and level of concern for stock-type show horses' welfare. Data were collected through an online questionnaire that included questions relating to (a) interest and general understanding of horse welfare, (b) welfare concerns of...

The purpose of this study was to develop an effective instrument to measure student readiness in online learning with reliable predictors of online learning success factors such as learning outcomes and learner satisfaction. The validity and reliability of the Student Online Learning Readiness (SOLR) instrument were tested using exploratory factor...

Given the continued growth of online learning opportunities it is essential to examine ways to increase students’ satisfaction and learning in online courses. Researchers have reflected on enhancing social presence and reported positive significant relationships between social presence and students’ satisfaction as well as social presence and stude...

This study investigated the modality effect in relation to verbal working memory capacity and time of testing within a computerized second language multimedia learning environment. Twenty-nine advanced learners of English with Turkish as the first language were randomly assigned to audiovisual or visual-only presentations about an unfamiliar topic...

The purpose of this paper is to use the Social Cognitive Theory and its moral disengagement framework to emphasize the need for stock-type horse associations to minimize potential and actual threats to their legitimacy in an effort to maintain and strengthen self-regulating governance, specifically relating to the occurrence of inhumane treatment t...

This study examines the reliability and validity of a Korean version of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) instrument for online learning. The measurement consists of 34 items to evaluate social presence, teaching presence, and cognitive presence and was translated from English into Korean for this study. A Cyber University in Seoul, Korea was selected...

Teacher identity is defined as a sense of teacher self that results from a productive combination of key personal and professional subjectivities or beliefs. Much empirical research has been done on the development of teacher identity in the K-12 arena, with a great deal of theoretical and philosophical scholarship about teaching at the college lev...

This study has the aim of investigating the factor structure of an adapted version of the Community of Inquiry survey developed by Arbaugh et al. (2008). For this purpose, both exploratory and confirmatory analyses were employed in addition to a parallel analysis using two different samples. The results indicated a three-factor structure as well as...

The intent of this study was to learn about students' perceived barriers and the impact of those barriers on the quality of online discussions between two distinct cultural groups in Eastern and Northern Siberia (Russia). A mixed-methods approach utilizing surveys and interviews was used to investigate (1) the types of barriers the students perceiv...

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the relationships between and among teaching, social, and cognitive presence. To this end, Spearman's rank correlation and partial correlation analyses were employed. The results referred to (a) positive large bivariate correlational relationships between presence types, and (b) the dependence of t...

The number of students taking online courses continues to grow each year. Despite the growth, a large percentage of faculties still don't accept the value of online learning. Online educators find themselves in exciting times where they continue advancing the dialogue about online learning, beyond the discussions of "is it as good as face-to-face i...

In this research the authors examined middle school special education teachers' perceptions of assistive technology during literacy instruction with students with high incidence disabilities. A survey explored the use, effectiveness, and factors impacting use or effectiveness of assistive technology for literacy teaching and learning. Results sugge...

This study examines the reliability and validation of Korean version measurement for the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework in online learning. The measurement consists of the 34 items to evaluate social presence, teaching presence, and cognitive presence and is translated English into Korean for this study. One Cyber University in Seoul, Korea w...

This paper discusses the history of Internetbased videoconferencing (IVC) within the teacher education program at a large Midwestern university. It explains ways this technology has been used to expand interactions with students and professionals in a wide variety of settings and thereby increase depth, diversity, and effectiveness of preservice te...

A multitude of factors influence interpersonal interaction between students and instructors in an online course. This study examines perceptions of six experienced online instructors to determine factors they believe increase interaction among their students and between the students and instructor of online courses. The end result is an inventory o...

This chapter addresses the relationship between types of initial question prompts and the levels of critical thinking demonstrated by students' responses in online discussions. The chapter is framed around a research study involving discussion prompts that were coded and classified using Andrews' typology (1980). Students' responses (n=1132), taken...

This paper reports on an investigation of student engagement with e-learning, using practitioner reflection as a lens. Five e-learning practitioners each provided a case study from their teach-ing, which was the focus of practitioners' reflective accounts. Each of the practitioners had used e-learning as a way of promoting both learning and engagem...

For over a decade, the learning management system (LMS) has been the primary method of delivering online learning. However, research related instructional design and pedagogical practices within this environment is still in its infancy as compared to face-to-face learning. While several frameworks for understanding pedagogical strategies and activi...

The intent of this study was to learn about students' perceived barriers and the impact of those barriers on the quality of online discussions between two distinct cultural groups in Eastern and Northern Siberia (Russia). A mixed-methods approach utilizing surveys and interviews was used to investigate (1) the types of barriers the students perceiv...

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a content analysis model for assessing students’ cognitive learning in asynchronous online discussions. It adopted a fully mixed methods design, in which qualitative and quantitative methods were employed sequentially for data analysis and interpretation. Specifically, the design was a “sequenti...

Based on the Community of Inquiry model (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000), this study has examined the nature and interactions of the teaching, cognitive, and social presences fostered between an instructor and students in an Education-based Social Network Site developed by a large Midwestern university, Mixable. Scaffolds were developed in orde...

Students engaged in problem-based learning (PBL) units solve ill-structured problems in small groups, and then present arguments in support of their solution. However, middle school students often struggle developing evidence-based arguments (Krajcik et al., J Learn Sci 7:313–350, 1998). Using a mixed method design, the researchers examined the use...

Being aware of cultural differences and knowing how to deal with related differences is critical for the success of online learning and training that involves learners from multiple countries and cultures. This study examines the perceived differences of participants from two different cultures on (1) students' participation behaviors; (2) students...

This study examined students' perceptions of peer feedback and learning in a large, undergraduate course that incorporated supplementary online discussions. Peer feedback (PF) was facilitated via an automated rating system, within Blackboard discussion forums, for half of the students enrolled in the course. Following the peer feedback process, stu...

Online discussion questions, which reflect differing instructional strategies, can take many forms and it is important for designers and instructors to understand how the various strategies can impact students' critical thinking levels. For the purpose of the study three instructional strategies used in the development and implementation of online...