Social and Cognitive Presence in Virtual Learning Environments

Social and Cognitive Presence in Virtual Learning Environments Terry Anderson, Ph.D. Canada Research Chair in Distance Education [email_address] Keynote lecture - Chais Conference Feb. 20, 2007 Open University of Israel

“ Canada is a great country, much too cold for common sense, inhabited by compassionate and intelligent people with bad haircuts”. Yann Martel , Life of Pi, 2002.

Athabasca University, Alberta, Canada * Athabasca University Fastest growing university in Canada 34,000 students 700 courses Graduate and Undergraduate programs Largest Master of Distance Education program Only USA Accredited University in Canada Athabasca University

“An expert is someone more than 500 miles away from home.” Prairie folk wisdom "Don't be so humble - you are not that great." – Golda Meir (1898-1978)

Presentation Overview Development and Evolution of the Community of Inquiry Model Cognitive Presence Social Presence Teaching presence Validations and Extensions Methodological weaknesses COI in a Networked Era

Motivations for the Community of Inquiry Investigation (1998-2004) CMC most widely used tool for interaction in online DE Need for a bird’s-eye view of the overall learning taking place, and to respond to that learning, assess it, and intervene. CMC hype & lack of empirical validation of claims Need for heuristic guides for both teachers and learners Desire to exploit affordances: Machine readable Time independent Reflective power of text Knowledge hidden in the transcripts Need for teacher usable tools to assess interventions

Story of Assistant Prof Jones:

Expectations of Models and Theories Create conceptual order and provide simplicity (parsimony) in describing and understanding complex phenomena. “ Science is a way of ordering events.” J. Bronowski, Common Sense of Science , 1978 Improve practice through guidelines and reflection??

Methodology- Quantitative Content Analysis “ The systematic and replicable examination of symbols of communication, that have been assigned numeric values according to valid measurement rules using statistical methods,” in order to: describe communication, draw inferences about its meaning, infer from the communication to its context, both of production and consumption. (p. 22) Riffe, Lacy, and Fico (1998) quantify impressions reveal additional insights that are not obvious from superficial reading or participation. allow educational researchers to compare, replicate results, increase understanding.

“ This article lays out a conceptual framework that identifies the elements that are crucial prerequisites for a successful higher educational experience.” 199 citations in Goggle Scholar Communitiesofinquiry.com Internet and Higher Education (2002)

John Dewey - reflective thinking "Active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusion to which it tends". (Dewey, 1933)

Characteristics of a Community of Inquiry Questioning Reasoning Connecting Deliberating Challenging Problem Solving Mathew Lipman, 2003 “ In reality, the reflective model is thoroughly social and communal.” p. 25

Cognitive Presence Definition: The extent to which the participants in any particular configuration of a community of inquiry are able to construct meaning through sustained communication. From Dewey, practical inquiry Variation of scientific method Most latent category Used full message as unit of analysis

Cognitive Presence “ An awareness of the critical thinking and inquiry dynamic is an essential metacognitive ability that encourages students: to approach a problem strategically and actively seek out sources of knowledge, discover biases, sift through the increasingly large quantities of information now available, and formulate and defend their own intellectual positions.” p. 96

Cognitive Presence Coding Results – Two Graduate level Courses

Phases of Cognitive Presence Meyer, K.(2003) Face-to-face versus threaded discussions: The role of time and higher-order thinking – JALN 7(3)

Why low rate of problem resolution? Instructional design- no problem to resolve Poor teacher guidance/assessment Resolution reflected in final papers/exams or case studies – not in online discussion Artificial context of formal learning- no space for real application Poor instrumentation or model Online asynch discussion is not powerful enough to support full cognitive presence Takes too much time

Social Presence Social presence is defined as "the ability of participants in a community of inquiry to project themselves socially and emotionally, as ‘real’ people (i.e. their full personality), through the medium of communication being used” Literature reviewed from “filtered-cues” (Short, et al. 1976) to “hyper-personal” (Walther, 1996). Most culturally bound of the ‘presences’ “ social-emotional literacy appears to be the most complicated of all types of digital literacy” (Eshet, 2004)

Expressing agreement Expression of emotions Affective Behaviours Use of humor Self-disclosure Complimenting, expressing appreciation Asking questions Referring explicitly to others’ messages. Quoting from others’ messages. Continuing a thread Interactive Behaviours Phatics, salutations Addresses or refers to the group using inclusive pronouns Vocatives Cohesive Behaviours

Social Presence Confirmation Rourke and Anderson (2000) an increase in the perceived frequency (survey results) of 7 of the 15 social expressions corresponded significantly to more positive ratings of the social environment. The 7 social expressions included addressing others by name, complimenting, expressing appreciation, using the reply feature to post messages, expressing emotions, using humor, and salutations.

“ We argue that cognitive presence …is more easily sustained when a significant degree of social presence has been established” Boot camps (F2F) and profiles Value of real time interaction? Aided by systems that support photos of participants? SecondLife? Value of expressions and avatars?

Comparing COI Online vs Face-to-Face Heckman & Annabi (2005) JCMC 10(2)

Teaching Presence Defined as: The design, facilitation and direction of cognitive and social processes for the purpose of realizing personally meaningful and educational worthwhile learning outcomes . Built upon the familiar models of Moore, Holmberg, Paulsen, and Mason, however provide ways to measure the construct.

Teaching Presence The transcript analysis allows researcher to disaggregate the roles Instructional designer and activity organizer Discourse facilitator Subject matter expert Especially critical in computer conferencing (asynch text) based education systems Major cause of course breakdown.

Macro-level comments about course content Netiquette Utilizing medium Establishing time parameters Designing methods Setting curriculum Instructional design & organization Indicator Category

Assess the efficacy of the process Drawing in participants, prompting discussion Setting climate for learning Encouraging, acknowledging, reinforcing contributions Seeking to reach consensus/understanding Identifying areas of agreement/disagreement Facilitating discussion Indicator Category

Inject knowledge from diverse sources, e.g., textbook, articles, internet, personal experiences Diagnose misconceptions Confirm understanding through assessment and explanatory feedback. Summarize the discussion Focus the discussion on specific issues Present content Direct Instruction Indicator Category

Teaching Presence results: Percentage of instructor messages

Percentage of instructor messages with multiple functions

Teacher Presence Correlated with perception of learning and learner satisfaction: Shea, Pickett, & Pelz (2003) A FOLLOW-UP INVESTIGATION OF “TEACHING PRESENCE” IN THE SUNY LEARNING NETWORK. JALN 7(3) .61 .63 Direct instruction .58 .61 facilitating discourse .60 .64 Instructional design Learning Satisfaction

Teaching Presence & Peer Moderating Peer teams (3-4 persons) moderated conferences last half of graduate course Higher levels of all three indicators of teacher presence than instructor! Many more moderator postings by peers Shows value of sharing and delegating teaching presence Interviews found insufficient probing by peer facilitators – too much share and compare Rourke and Anderson, 2002, JIME

Teaching presence and Peer Moderating De Laat & Lally (2003) Complexity, theory and praxis: Researching collaborative learning and tutoring processes in a networked learning community Instructional Science 31: 7–39, 2003. “ 14 of the 26 instances of Teaching Process (54%) in the average ALN discussion were performed by students. In the average FTF discussion, however, only 8 of 148 instances of Teaching Process (5%) were performed by students. “ Heckman & Annabi (2005) JCMC 10(2)

Additions to Our Work on Presences

Emotional Presence “ The extent to which learners and teachers transform their behaviour to accomodate the overt and covert presence of emotion” Campbell and Cleveland-Innes, 2004 Affect in the Community of Inquiry Model, Masters thesis Athabasca University

Emotional Presence Marti Clevland-Innes and Prisca Campbell (2005) Affect in the Community of Inquiry Model

We had included emotional presence as a component of social presence Did not allocate emotional as a distinct presence But we are REAL men!

Student Presence Students’ perceptions of the presence they had in the class were significantly correlated with the teacher’s assessment of their performance in the class, with the grade they would assign themselves, and with their attitudes about the course. Learning with Invisible Others: Perceptions of Online Presence and their Relationship to Cognitive T Russo, S Benson - Educational Technology & Society, 2005

PLE’s “ The logic of education systems should be reversed so that it is the system that conforms to the learner, rather than the learner to the system.” Futurelab Personalisation and Digital Technologies Green et al 2005 Downes, 2006

LSA and Neural Net McKlin et al (2004) used our Cognitive presence indicators with 182 General Inquirer categories and set of our key words to train a neural network. Good results, with comparable reliability to human coders. Need for more work using Neural nets, Latent Semantic Analysis and other automated techniques. Image: omobb.oasysmobile.com

COI Validation – Factor analysis Garrison , Cleveland-Innes & Fung (2004) Student role adjustment in online communities of inquiry: Model and instrument validation Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 2004 Confirmed students role clustered into three presences

COL used as a model for application analysis Of a role playing simulation MEKONG e-SIM www.adelaide.edu.au/clpd/materia/publication/confpapers/ICET2004paper.pdf . To compare Blogs and Threaded discussions. Anderson, 2006 Currently developing indicators for virtual worlds - SecondLife

Informal Blogged Support “ I think I'm actually applying their framework already by default, one of the great things about good models is that you don't really need to apply them - you just find yourself doing it. I think that Garrison and Anderson's model is descriptive rather than prescriptive in this regard.” Mark Nichols Blog http://www2.blogger.com/profile/05666493097199544658

Is Text Analysis Worth it? “The preliminary application of our coding template using the indicators reveal that it is a useful method for identifying, assessing, and facilitating cognitive, social, and teaching presence in asynchronous, text-based computer conferencing.” Reliability and validity ?????

Methodology Reflections: Unit of Analysis What segment of the transcript will coders categorize? Whole posting, sentence, paragraph, phrase? CMC communication is idiosyncratic variables often do not organize themselves into syntactic packages—paragraphs, postings too long, sentences, phrases too short. How reliably can unit itself be identified?

Units of Analysis Message? manageable data set, objectively identifiable by coders, but often too large useful when it encompasses the variable Thematic Unit? a single item of information in its natural form most commonly used unit of analysis unreliable, coders are not alerted to the need for a decision. Speech Turn? Grammatical indicator? Sentence, paragraph, utterance – Paragraph description in Wikipedia is over 600 words – from one word to pages of text!

Software to Aide Analysis Qualitative analysis software NUD*IST, Hyperqual, Atlas- ti facilitates coding process both autocode and manually Simple statistics and export Quantitative analysis software SPSS facilitates assessment of interrater agreement Presentation of descriptive statistics

Ethics Research participants “individuals about whom a scholar obtains data through intervention or interaction” identifiable private information Does transcript analysis constitute “intervention or interaction?” Transcripts often contain “private information” Are transcripts meaningful if “redacted”

Reliability Our own ability to define categories and units showed that we could establish reliability but this was dependent on the unit of analysis As expected, the latent, and especially latent projective variables are most challenging (but often the most interesting) to relaibly identify and code

Validity Problems Knowledge telling and knowledge transforming refer to mental processes by which texts are composed, not to texts themselves. (Bereiter & Scardemalia, 1987, p. 13). Linguistic expressions of thought, are indicators of and not equivalent to thinking Learning and interaction occur outside of the transcript. The personal context is often more pervasive than the networked educational context.

Qualitative vs. Quantitative Content Analysis Quantitative: Easiest with manifest variables Requires rigorous attention to reliability Can you count the most important educational variables and do they exist in the transcripts? Qualitative: Faster, Maybe gets at the “big picture” easier Low transferability, generalizability and comparison capacity

Different tools – Same Community of Inquiry? “ Different mediums serve different social presence purposes and are heavily indicative of one element. For instance, in the virtual world, IM has primarily interactive indicators and blogs have affective indicators. In order to build a balanced community …. a variety of technologies should be introduced and encouraged.” Kemp & Walsh 2006 Can COI model be used to assess preence using social software, Web 2.0 and tools of the educational semantic web (Anderson and Whitelaw, 2004)

Equivalency Are live teachers critical to teaching presence? Anderson, T. (2003) Getting the Mix Right. IRRODL

COI meets Web 2.0 How much does social presence increase in synchronous activities Does adding voice (auidoconferencing) graphics (web conferencing), pictures (video), virtual environment (immersion) significantly increase social presence? When does too much social presence detract from cognitive presence? Are the resulting limitations on access worth social and pedagogical gains?

Web 2.0 Social Presence Cohesive MySpace 70 million users, SecondLife 2.7 mil New lingo, new patterns of interaction Interactive Records levels of text, audio and video one to one and one to many via Blogs, Wikis and UTube Presence moves beyond the class Affective Multimedia allows body language and voice intonation thereby affording greater degrees of affective communications Real time is social time

Web 2.0 Cognitive Presence Triggering Vast increase in content and context for triggering experiences Realtime data, videocams, podcasts, sophisticated analysis Exploration: Search, Google Earth, data bases Need not be confined to within the community Multiple culture, contexts Integration Powerful and collaborative modeling, mapping, presentation and diagram tools Resolution Workplace/home and third places becoming net enabled As more activity becomes net enabled, we should be able to see “real application” resolution increase

Web 2.0 Teaching Presence Direct Instruction: Power of voice and body language through audio, video and immersive Many more resources for referral, scaffolding and reference Adaptive tutorials Use of autonomous agents Virtual communities of practice Instructional design – Learning objects IMS Learning Design - an Educational Markup Language Validated patterns (see Rohse and Anderson, 2006) Facilitating Discourse Immersive environments Agents to track, summarize, record Decision making tools RSS, syndication, filtering, selective retrieval

COI Beyond the Threaded Discussion Blogging has distinct advantages over more common threaded discussion in its support of style, ownership and identity and its public nature may enhance resolution phases of cognitive presence. Lack of safety may inhibit social presence Blogs are a challenging media for expressing teaching presence Cameron and Anderson, 2006 Comparing Weblogs to Threaded Discussion Tools in Online Educational Contexts http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Nov_06/article01.htm

Teaching Presence in a Life Long Learning Era Learners of today “used to work for someone else, but will increasingly work for themselves and instead of serving as functionaries in the achievement of purposes set by others, they will increasingly set purposes for themselves” Richard Sampson, 2005

The COI model grew from traditional institutional focused education – does it speak to net enhanced life long learning? Net living requires teachers to help students: Discover new solutions and new problems Increase their social capital Focus multiple perspectives and information to create new knowledge Make worthwhile things happen

Conclusions: Theoretical Models like COI can be useful: Descriptive power: – making sense, accurately depicting Rhetorical power: help us reflect and talk about our experience Inferential power: help us to evolve and test educational innovations and interventions Applicatory power: Helps us design interventions with greatest likelihood of working in real contexts Halverson, C.A. (2002). Activity theory and distributed cognition: Or what does CSCW need to DO with theories? Computer Supported Cooperative Work 11: 243–267. C

Advice for Practice from COI Model Garrison (2006) extracted principles in bit of a ‘how to’ paper Establish a climate that will create a community of inquiry. Establish critical reflection and discourse that will support systematic inquiry. Sustain community through expression of group cohesion. Encourage and support the progression of inquiry through to resolution. Evolve collaborative relationships where students are supported in assuming increasing responsibility for their learning. Ensure that there is resolution and metacognitive development. Journal Asynch Learning Networks 2006 10(1)

Conclusions Need to triangulate quantitative transcript analysis with other techniques

Conclusions The COI model can and must grow to meet the emerging Net 2.0 context The Media is the Message

Comments? Questions? Terry Anderson, [email_address] Slides at: cider.athabascau.ca/Members/terrya/presentations When’s lunch? May I go to the restroom? Gee whiz, when does the REAL FUN start?

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; Third by experience, which is the bitterest. Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

Pattern for a ‘Discussion Group’  Discussion groups are the most common way of organising activity in networked learning environments. The degree to which a discussion is structured, and the choice of structure, are key in determining how successfully the discussion will promote learning for the participants. Therefore: Start any online discussion by establishing its structure. Make the rules and timetable for this structure explicit to all the members of the group. Where there is little time available to the group for the discussion, and/or the members of the group are inexperienced at holding online discussions, the teacher/facilitator should set the structure. Where the students are to set their own structure, the teacher/facilitator should give them support and ideas about how to do this, and encourage them to do so in a fair and timely way.  Towards a Pattern Language for Networked Learning - Peter Goodyear et al (2004)

Social and Cognitive Presence in Virtual Learning Environments

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