Revising the Community of Inquiry Framework for the Analysis of One-To-One Online Learning Relationships

In online learning research, the theoretical community of inquiry framework has been used extensively to analyze processes of inquiry among learners and instructors within a community. This paper examines a special case of community of inquiry consisting of only one learner and one instructor. Together they en­gage in an online coaching discourse to form a relationship of inquiry. Within these relationships, coachees pass through processes of practical inquiry process while a coach supports the process. In this study, a framework and coding scheme were developed for use in a transcript coding procedure including 3,109 messages from an online coaching case in math for K–12 students. It is found that the elements of cognitive, teaching, and social presence, as well as the newly proposed emotional presence, which outlines a community of inquiry, comprise an effective structure for the analysis of one-to-one online coaching environments. The findings of this exploratory study suggest that a relationship of inquiry framework has the potential to support development of one-to-one online learning.

"The findings of this study indicate that relationships of inquiry are developed between coaches and the coachees using Math Coach. It is noted that they share the airtime equivalent and that all presences exist in the educational discourse, but cognitive and teaching presence were more often found than social and emotional presence. In comparing the different educational stages, only the directed affectiveness of coaches had a significant difference in relation to the age group of the coachee. Thus, there were almost no differences in terms of how a conversation was conducted by the coachees at the different educational stages." (Authors, 48)