Assessing student perceptions of the community of inquiry model through group collaboration via online and face-to-face instruction

The purpose of this mixed-method study was to assess student perceptions of teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence, measured by the Community of Inquiry Sacle (Arbaugh et al., 2008), through group collaboration via online and face-to-face instruction. Thirty-seven teacher education students participated in this quasi-experimental study at a land-grant university in the Pacific Northwest in fall 2009. Participants in the experimental and control groups engaged in three group projects: teacher interview reports, group journal article summaries, and case study discussions. The participants completed the Community of Inquiry Scale which was used as a pre- and post-test. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected to cross-validate data analyses. The results of computing a multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) showed that there were significant differences in student perception regarding teaching presence and social presence after an eight-week intervention. Online participants reported significantly lower scores in teaching presence and social presence. The results of the follow-up analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) indicated that online participants rated significantly lower scores in the categories of facilitating discourse and direct instruction under teaching presence than face-to-face participants. Additionally, online participants rated significantly lower scores in the category of affective expression under social presence than their face-to-face counterparts. There was no significant difference in cognitive presence between the two groups. Qualitative data including students' responses to both open-ended questions and face-to-face interviews triangulated the results from the quantitative analyses and provided interpretative support for the quantitative data.