Dynamics of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) within a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for In-Service Teachers in Environmental Education
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Background
2.1. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for the Professional Development of In-Service Teachers
2.2. Community of Inquiry (CoI) Theoretical Framework
2.2.1. Social Presence
2.2.2. Cognitive Presence
2.2.3. Teaching Presence
2.3. CoI Coding Protocol
3. Materials and Methods
3.1. Research Setting
- Give an overview on how our energy production and use could be more sustainable
- Provide ideas, support, and stimulation to handle the topic in teaching
- Foster the interaction between the experts in the field and share good practice internationally, as well as support learning together
- Bring up Finnish expertise and studying possibilities within the field.
3.2. Study Participants
3.3. Materials
3.4. Methodology
4. Results
4.1. Reliability Findings
4.2. Presence of a CoI
5. Discussion
5.1. Community of Inquiry within Sustainable Energy in Education MOOC
5.1.1. Social Presence
“I hope [for] even more interaction with the other students. When the course is international, it would be nice to include one assignment with national aspect. Instructions for contacting the coordinator of the course were a little bit confusing for a first timer.”
5.1.2. Cognitive Presence
5.1.3. Teaching Presence
“Although perhaps it’s not the aim of the course, I think that course contacts should take part more in discussions.”
5.2. Improving the CoI Transcript Analysis Methods
6. Conclusions
Acknowledgments
Author Contributions
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Elements | Categories | Indicators (Examples Only) |
---|---|---|
Cognitive presence | Triggering event | Sense of puzzlement |
Exploration | Information exchange | |
Integration | Connecting ideas | |
Resolution | Applying new ideas | |
Social presence | Emotional expression | Emotions |
Open communication | Risk-free expression | |
Group cohesion | Encouraging collaboration | |
Teaching presence | Instructional management | Defining/initiating discussion topics |
Building understanding | Sharing personal meaning | |
Direct instruction | Focusing discussion |
Discussion 1 | Discussion 2 | Discussion 3 | |
---|---|---|---|
Agree | 33 | 28 | 8 |
Negotiated agreement | 11 | 23 | 13 |
Disagreement | 9 | 3 | 1 |
Total messages | 56 | 58 | 24 |
Agreement w/o negotiation | 58.2% | 48.3% | 33.3% |
Negotiated agreement | 83.6% | 87.9% | 87.5% |
Holsti’s C.R. 1 | Cohen’s Kappa 2 | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
Initial | Negotiated | Initial | Negotiated | |
Discussion 1 | 0.58 | 0.84 | 0.60 | 0.64 |
Discussion 2 | 0.48 | 0.88 | 0.84 | 0.93 |
Discussion 3 | 0.33 | 0.88 | 0.14 | 0.65 |
Total | 0.46 | 0.86 | 0.70 | 0.82 |
Categories | Frequency | Example Forum Posts |
---|---|---|
Cognitive Presence | ||
Triggering event | 7 | “How to provide a clean and environmentally friendly energy sources without large increase in energy prices? Will the rich countries become richer, and the poor countries even poorer? Will it increase the economic gap? Students are discussed and decided that the transition to alternative energy sources should go gradually and on a global level. Larger investments are needed in developing countries to meet their energy needs (environmentally-friendly energy sources).” |
Exploration | 44 | “Currently Europe and (north) America pushes all the electronic waste to recycling in Ghana, Africa. Recycling and treatment of that harmful computer parts are there cheap. Western companies do not have to protect the health of workers because there are no labor unions and so on. This type of waste treatment costs too much in the Western world... Out of sight, out of mind! It would be great if schools could somehow take part in to this the e-waste topics in teaching! [...] Perhaps this could be processed into a philosophical debate?” |
Integration | 30 | “During my classes I use »Under Cover«, a resource book on global dimensions. (http://www.nazemi.cz/sites/default/files/undercover_intro.pdf) where you can find all the topics mentioned in posts below. Kids really like topic called »Virtual water« where they learn how much water is used for production different things e.g., t-shirt, coffee, meat ... Further on we try to find out what happens with wasted water and how is this influenced on environmental foot print of one city. This is long term project and I try to find some eTwinnig partners and children are investigating usually for few months. At the end they have a presentations of their results in front school mates, other school employees, parents and they share their results with eTwinning partners.” |
Resolution | 8 | “Deforestation is a huge environmental problem seeing as forests absorb a huge amount of CO2 […] After the students have fully understood the problem, they could be divided into three teams. The first should do a research on the benefits of stopping deforestation, the second should research the negative effects of stopping deforestation and the last one should research the reasons for which deforestation has become such a huge problem. When all teams have finished their researches, students should discuss their findings and have a “play-roll” of a trial where each student defends his/her opinion […] The benefits one student would have from this experience would be that he/she has gained knowledge on an important matter. In addition, he/she has learned that problems like this one are more complex than they seem and we have to take every aspect of that problem into consideration.” |
Social Presence | ||
Emotional Expression | 1 | “I agree that experiments are important. I found it a bit challenging in innovating those for the life-cycle analysis topic.” |
Open communication | 30 | “I agree with you dear colleague. Experiments help students investigate by themselves, decide and find solutions.” |
Group cohesion | 2 | “We, as teachers, should try to sensitize children to a major ecological, health and social threat of the century: climate change.” |
Teaching Presence | ||
Instructional management | 0 | No example available |
Building understanding | 0 | No example available |
Direct instruction | 3 | “The best method to teach LCA to students is to make sure they understand the concept that everything we do in a given process, has its own consequences. […] the most important idea is to help students to identify what makes a product.” |
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Share and Cite
Kaul, M.; Aksela, M.; Wu, X. Dynamics of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) within a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for In-Service Teachers in Environmental Education. Educ. Sci. 2018, 8, 40. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci8020040
Kaul M, Aksela M, Wu X. Dynamics of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) within a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for In-Service Teachers in Environmental Education. Education Sciences. 2018; 8(2):40. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci8020040
Chicago/Turabian StyleKaul, Maya, Maija Aksela, and Xiaomeng Wu. 2018. "Dynamics of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) within a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for In-Service Teachers in Environmental Education" Education Sciences 8, no. 2: 40. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci8020040