Theory Light: Missed Opportunities to understand the connection between Theory and Practice in the Blended Learning Classroom

D. Randy Garrison and Norman D. Vaughan’s utilize a Community of Inquiry framework to guide their recommendations in their book “Blended Learning in Higher Education: Framework, Principles, and Guidelines”.  Framed in the foundations of experiential learning, Garrison and Vaughan (2008) provide an overview of the Community of Inquiry Framework (CoI).  I’m continually struck at the lack of acknowledgement of the theoretical influences at play in the Blended Learning and Online Learning literature.  While the authors provide an excellent foundation with suggestions for practical skills to design and facilitate a problem-based experiential framework, they overlook the important theoretical foundations at play in the knowledge they share.  In order to highlight the missed opportunities I outline the CoI Framework and begin to draw connections to education theory, philosophy, and communication theory (providing perhaps some directions for further research and exploration by communication scholars).

CoI Framework is a pedagogical approach which combines social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence for online learning. I first encountered the CoI framework in the process of revising a research paper which provided a comparison of face-to-face, online, and blended learning in the Basic Communication Course. I have taught the CoI model as part of a broader discussion on online learning as a higher education consultant (http://prezi.com/mq4krbllc9ix/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share) and truly appreciate the utility of the framework.

At the heart of it the CoI Framework focuses on the importance of creating an open and supportive communication climate to facilitate a method of inquiry that is designed to be collaborative and experiential. The authors spend only a few paragraphs situating the CoI Framework within the broader educational philosophy though the work of John Dewey. While Dewey is certainly the theoretical foundation of experiential learning and the students’ active engagement in the process of learning, no attention is paid to the extensions of our understanding of the role of student in this active engagement.  Perhaps a discussion of Kolb’s (1984) theory of experiential learning cycle could provide some nice extensions as to why experiential learning works for the Net Generation of students.   

The model consists of three main elements: Social Presence, Cognitive Presence, and Teaching Presence (Garrison and Vaughan, 2008). 

Social presence is concerned with development of a supportive communication climate through interaction between learners through supporting discourse.  The instructor’s goal is to provide opportunities for students to foster relationships with one another in a collaborative environment.

Cognitive presence is a process of inquiry. The authors utilize a Practical Inquiry Model which highlights the ways in which we move from inductive to deductive understandings of the content.  The model privileges rational solutions and is essentially a hermeneutic circle. The underlying assumption of a Phenomenological perspective is never addressed by the authors.  Even a simple explanation of the phenomenological approach (e.g., Littlejohn & Foss, 2010) would provide a bit of theoretical context for the reader.

Teaching presence centers on the role of the instructor in the design and facilitation of the blended learning environment.  Again opportunities to discuss issues related to the power relationships at play in the educational process and how this informs our teaching presence is a missed opportunity.  The privileging of dialogue in the CoI framework is an important shift in the pedagogical approach.  As communication scholars many of our courses are already taught in a dialogical approach.  The works of Paulo Freire (1970) and bell hooks (1994) both highlight the importance of dialogue and problematize issue of power in the teacher-student relationship.  We must at some point be willing to question our role as a teacher in order to make the necessary shift in our pedagogical approach to embrace experiential learning. 

The CoI framework assumes a pedagogy in which the teacher is willing step back and allow students to actively engage in the co-construction of knowledge (e.g., Freire). The authors discuss the importance of the students to take a more active role and responsibility in their education, but they fail to acknowledge the importance of the paradigm shift of a dialogical approach. A theoretical understanding of the importance of the role of the instructor to embrace an engaged pedagogy (e.g., bell hooks) to accomplish experiential learning is a necessary shift in our construction of the role of the teacher. Simply saying the instructor is now a facilitator is not enough.  What are the consequences of this shift to our understanding of this relationship? Why is this shift important?  How does this shift empower students in a positive way? What are the unintended consequences of this shift and how should instructors negotiate those differences? The missed opportunity here is to highlight how the CoI framework reflects the paradigm shift in our pedagogical approaches to higher education.  As teachers we are not merely information givers but we facilitate dialogues and create an educational environment in which experiences result in deeper levels of meaning and complex understandings of concepts.

The CoI framework is truly useful framework to understand both our online, blended and face-to-face classrooms, however, the authors fail to address the theoretical implications of the framework and miss the opportunity to  address why this framework works as well as it does and how their framework represents a paradigm shift in higher education. – kal