Open AccessThe Community of Inquiry in Writing Studies Survey: Interpreting Social Presence in Disciplinary Contexts
Author(s) -
M. Kathryn Stewart,
Lyra Hilliard,
Natalie Stillman-Webb,
Jennifer Cunningham
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
online learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2472-5749
pISSN - 2472-5730
DOI - 10.24059/olj.v25i2.2275
Subject(s) - discipline , scholarship , conversation , context (archaeology) , psychology , survey data collection , sociology , survey research , pedagogy , social science , applied psychology , geography , political science , statistics , mathematics , communication , archaeology , law
This article applies the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework to a particular disciplinary context: first-year writing (FYW). Students enrolled in online FYW courses across three institutions (n = 272) completed a version of the CoI survey that was slightly modified to fit the disciplinary context of writing studies. A factor analysis was conducted to determine how well the CoI in Writing Studies data aligned with typical CoI survey research; teaching presence and cognitive presence loaded onto single factors, but the social presence items divided into multiple factors. The authors put their findings in conversation with other scholarship about social presence, especially Carlon et al. (2012) and Kreijns et al. (2014), and advocate for differentiating between survey items that relate to “social presence,” “social comfort,” “attitude,” and “social learning.” They also recommend that future disciplinary uses of the CoI Survey include survey items that ask students to report on the extent to which they engaged in the types of social learning that the discipline values.