ABOUT THE MOOC

For educators, designers, and other educational professionals.

The Community of Inquiry (CoI) is a pedagogical model that supports digital teaching and learning: online, in-person, and blended. Education for contemporary, digital societies is a complex process that requires the design and delivery of a thoughtful interplay between the instructor, student interactions, and course resources. The Col framework gets at the heart of establishing and sustaining multi-modal educational experiences through the development of interdependent elements: social, cognitive, and teaching presence.

The Designing for Communities of Inquiry in Online Courses (DCOI) massive open online course will explore the why and how of using the Col as the basis for developing and teaching high quality online and blended courses. In this course, we highlight practical ways of helping students learn through active participation and shared sense-making. Current Col application issues related to shared metacognition, learning analytics, and artificial intelligence will also be explored in this highly engaging inquiry-based MOOC.

The Col provides a meaningful 21st century framework for digital education pedagogy. Educators, designers, and administrators will all benefit from taking this course to learn about the Col and how it supports learning, now and into the future.

During this MOOC, you will:

• Discuss the important foundational elements of online learning
• Describe the philosophical and theoretical foundations of the CoI Model
• Identify the three components of the CoI and their design elements
• Apply CoI standard and emerging design elements as tested in recent research
• Use the CoI survey to review courses and programmes and conduct action research on building CoI
• Design a Col Implementation plan for an online course and beyond

This course is open to anyone, anywhere, and is mobile-friendly. DCOI has been designed to assist professors, teachers, instructional designers, education developers, and education technology specialists to rethink pedagogical processes and develop appropriate action plans for techno-pedagogical change within their own context.

Week 1 Foundations of online teaching and learning	History of online teaching and learning Media in education Education interactions
Week 2 Elements of the Community of Inquiry framework	Cognitive presence Teaching presence Social presence Emotional and other presences
Week 3 Roles, strategies and tactics implementing the Col	Roles of the instructor Roles of the learner Strategies and tactics for building CoI
Week 4 Designing and sustaining online communities of inquiry	Designing online courses Designing online CoI
Week 5 Exploring and assessing elements of quality for CoI	Examining the CoI Survey instruments Assessing for quality CoI elements

Two levels of certification are available based on your level of participation and completion of tasks/activities:

• Certificate of Participation: requires 70% or more on each quiz and participation in at least three discussion forums.
• Certificate of Completion: requires 70% or more on each quiz, participation in at least three discussion forums, and successful completion of a CoI Implementation Plan.

Certificates are made available at no charge as verifiable PDF documents.