As a normal student who grew up in a public school in BC, I have never appreciated or even noticed the concept of building relationships since it felt like it was a phenomena that just happens. It was only until my first semester of online schooling, in the summer of 2020 due to COVID-19, that I noticed online learning was a very different, and somewhat more difficult way to learn material, and interact with classmates. As a third-year student in Health Information Science (HINF), courses heavily involved group work in teams of 3-6 people. All communications such as planning, discussions, meetings, and collaborative work was done online through common mediums such as Google Docs, Zoom, and Facebook Messenger. During lectures, professors would often have their webcams on and try to engage the classes similar to an in-person setting. They would ask questions, and follow up on answers with their own experiences and expertise. Some courses often involved splitting up into breakout groups and discussing topics mentioned from a list of questions or brought up in class. Many times, these breakout groups would be very quiet or class focused, and did not give many opportunities just to socialize. Developing a social pretense online was only emphasized in a professional matter as co-op work terms are mandatory in HINF, and creating a LinkedIn profile was the main way to learn about the leaders in our industry and interact with influential people. I would imagine that our professors had a difficult time judging whether or not the class. Garrison et al. emphasizes three dimensions of online instructional learning: Social Presence, Cognitive Presence, and Teaching presence (2000). Social Presence refers to the ability for students to resonate within a community, their classmates, and make meaningful interactions with them that they could take with them in the future (Garrison et al., 2000). Cognitive presence is the students ability to learn, understand, and remember concepts taught in class through verbal, visual, and physical reciprocation (Garrison et al., 2000). Teaching presence is facilitating social and cognitive processes to occur in a meaningful manner that gives the students an enriching learning environment. These three dimensions form the Community of Inquiry framework that enables students to learn. From personal experience, all three sections of the framework were impacted by the massive migration to online learning, as both students and instructors need to adjust to more restricted versions of each dimension. It does lead to more stress, and work on both sides, as not all students can learn online efficiently, and not all teachers can judge their students on their understanding.
Since my professors had such little time to transition and adapt their teaching into the online world, I do not blame them for not meeting all these dimensions because they trained to teach their materials in-person. Although some of my professors have attended and spoke at online conferences with thousands of professionals, teaching a whole curriculum class online requires careful planning and restructuring of lectures, guest presentations, and assignments. As a person who has not really thought about themselves being a teacher because of my communicational weaknesses, I am now challenging myself to learn the theory, and hopefully benefit from taking EDCI 339.
References
Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher educationmodel. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3), 87-105.
