Cognitive Processing in Online Communities of Inquiry

Abstract

The Community of Inquiry framework has been a major feature guiding research on the cognitive processes facilitated by student discourse in online learning environments. The primary analytic approaches used to assess cognitive presence have been via manual content analysis or student questionnaires. However, advancements in technology-enhanced methods offer new opportunities for expanding the analytical scope of research in online learning environments. This study sampled student discussion posts from an online undergraduate college course to explore relationships between the surface-level linguistic features observed in student posts with their level of cognitive presence. To do so, we evaluated a multi-level model to identify which phases of cognitive presence best fit students’ use of cognitive processing language in their online discussion posts. Of the four cognitive presence phases, resolution and exploration were the most effective predictors of cognitive processing language in their online discussion posts.