Do they match? Comparing “Community of Inquiry” perceptions of trainers and their participants

Limberg, S.; Breimann, L.; Schewe, G.

Abstract

More than 15 years ago, Arbaugh and colleagues developed a survey referring to the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework that deals with presence in digital learning environments. Although this instrument has been used in numerous studies, some crucial issues are still neglected, such as the trainers’ perspective and the time of data collection. We aim to advance the CoI discourse by comparing the perceptions of online trainers and their participants. After all, such a comparison contributes to trainers’ professional development and, thus, fosters participants’ learning success. We draw on the established CoI presences (cognitive, social, teaching) and their ten categories. Data was collected from 19 trainers and 77 of their participants and analyzed using paired t-tests. Our findings indicate that trainers rate the CoI presences lower than their participants. To add further value, we considered the survey timing by analyzing data from 15 trainers who filled out a second questionnaire four weeks later, and our results suggest that their answers are rather stable over time. We encourage scholars to go beyond cross-sectional responses from participants and view the CoI survey from different perspectives.

Keywords
Community of Inquiry; comparison; perception; trainers; participants