Online Community of Inquiry - Online Community of Practice

http://www.stephenp.net/2007/04/10/online-community-of-inquiry-online-community-of-practice/
Online Community of Inquiry - Online Community of Practice
Randy Garrison, University of Calgary, offersthis draft Online Community of Inquiry Review: Social, Cognitive, and Teaching Presence Issues (2006).
The research tool (below) developed by Garrison, Anderson and Archer(2000) is put forward as a framework that has “provided significantinsights and methodological solutions for studying online learning”.
Those with experience of participating in online communities willlikely feel some ‘resonance’ with some or all of the elementsidentified:
social presence - the ability to project one’s self and establish personal and purposeful relationships
cognitive presence - exploration, construction,resolution and confirmation of understanding through collaboration andreflection in a community of inquiry
teaching presence - different aspects– design, facilitation and direct instruction

Garrison, Anderson and Archer (2000)
As Randy implies, part of the driver for the development of theresearch tool was to be able to quantify the value of onlinecommunities of inquiry (CoI). I wonder if trying to ‘weigh the onlinepig’ in this way they risk undermining the potential of very thing theyare seeking to promote.
In trying to understand complex situations such as how learningtakes place in online communities, I would argue that a strong casecould be made for the truism that ‘you get what you measure’. Is theframework developed pushing us to measure the right things, or is itsimply identifying that which can be more easily observed andquantified?
Arguably, Wenger’sCommunity of Practice(CoP) learning theory provides an approach that is congruent with theuse of emerging online technologies (web 2.0) that are founded onuser-generated content and social networks -“connectivism”).
For Wenger, “The basic idea is that human knowing is fundamentally asocial act”. More specifically, “Communities of practice are groups ofpeople who share a concern or a passion for something (domain) they doand learn how to do (practice) it better as they interact regularly(community).”
A process of negotiation and resultant ‘meaning making’ defines thecommunity. This ongoing interaction changes the identity of theindividual and their relationship to the group as a whole and its othermembers.
Different communities come into contact with each other at theboundary (practice or domain of knowledge, or community) and it is herethat the most potential for innovation exists as new and competingideas interact.
The implications of integrating a CoP approach with a CoI wouldplace less emphasis on the instructional aspects of the teaching roleand instead see them focusing on the importance of modeling desiredbehaviour such as critically reflecting on their own experiences.Labels for individuals such as teacher and student would diminish insignificance as all community members adopted different roles accordingto their knowledge, experience and changing identity. Individualsmembership of different online and f2f communities would allow for theopportunity of cross pollination of ideas and experiences.
The description could be developed further, but in such a model, thesingle most important identifier of success, would be who are thecommunity members becoming rather than what do they know about X or Y.
It would be easy to get carried away describing some idealised modelfor Higher Education when the reality dictates something that is verymuch different.
In his paper Randy summarises the characteristics of a community ofinquiry (below) and, in so far as they go, they make good sense to me.However, I would suggest that the boundaries could be pushed furtherand that by re-visiting the categories and indicators of the researchtool offered, then a more powerful model for an online community ofinquiry could be developed and if this what we measure, then this iswhat we will increasingly get!
“A community of inquiry needs to have clear expectationsas to the nature of critical discourse and their postings. Participantsneed to be aware of the academic objectives, the phases of inquiry, andthe level of discourse. These educational challenges raise theimportance and role of teaching presence. The distinction betweenfacilitation and direction must also be clear from a designperspective. Teaching presence must consider the dual role of bothmoderating and shaping the direction of the discourse. Both areessential for a successful community of inquiry.”