Community of Inquiry for Graduate Certificate in Higher Education

Abstract

The Graduate Certificate in Higher Education (GCHE) programme is conducted in a blended mode (workshop learning activities and online forum discussion) using the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework where the three interdependent elements, Teaching Presence, Social Presence and Cognitive Presence, provide the frame to design, facilitate and teach the units in the programme. In line with the framework requirements, the workshop learning activities are designed to engage students in active learning and to build a sense of community among GCHE students who are full-time lecturers. This programme is compulsory for all lecturers except those who have acquired similar qualification or have many years of teaching experience. The Practical Inquiry (PI) model is used to analyze the cognitive dimension of the knowledge-building processes occurring in online discussions. This analysis focuses on the top and bottom 10th percentile of the students’ discussions. Incidentally, exploration is the most frequently coded category of messages posted by the students (overall, 38%). The results from the PI model also indicate when there were limited interventions from the facilitator in the forum discussions it did not lead to students adrift. But the cognitive presence indicator shows that it fails to take the discussion to the resolution stage. Hence, even for students who are lecturers with postgraduate degrees “guide on the side” for online learning may not work. The facilitator needs to prompt the students and post messages to inspire them to move on to the resolution stage.