Cindy Xin

Thank you Sylvia for the introduction. To open the discussion I would like to attempt a partial summary of my critique of the community of inquiry framework (CoI). Sarah will follow to provide further thoughts. The full article is at http://www.jofde.ca/index.php/jde/article/view/755/1333. For those not familiar with CoI, I provide a summary description of the framework in my article. You should also refer to the original article -

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3), 87−105.

My main arguments are three-fold. First, online discussion must be understood as foremost a communication phenomenon. Human communication is almost always multi-functional. In online discussions, we often combine instruction, intellectual exchange, and social interaction in a single utterance (as I am doing right now). Because of the multi-functionality of communication the three main aspects of CoI — cognitive presence, social presence and teaching presence — are intertwined. The distinction of these presences is useful for analyzing a conference after the fact, but they do not necessarily provide a participant the sense of what s/he should do in-situ when a conversation is in the making. This brings me to my next argument.

Online presence must be constructed through actual communicative acts that perform various social, pedagogical, and cognitive functions. By communicative acts I specifically refer to what Andrew Feenberg (1989) calls moderating functions. To create effective online presence, for example, a teacher must perform functions such as setting the agenda, recognition, prompting, and weaving. Performance of these communicative functions creates the context and atmosphere for discussion to continue. Desired states of affairs such as “open communication” and “group cohesion,” identified as two categories under CoI’s social presence, may or may not apply in any given situation. Participants must actively construct them via communicative acts. Online presence is an effect of what people do, i.e., their performance of communicative functions. By clarifying the nature of presence online, I wish to draw our attention to what leads to the presence of a participant or a thought or feeling.

The CoI model separates out the social dimension of communication. I argue that the social interaction between participants is essential to all communication, including intellectual exchange. Intense intellectual discussion depends on and produces social interaction no less than casual talk. Rather than attempting to isolate what is social as defined in CoI, I argue that the true sociality of online forums lies in the dynamics of discussion itself. Back and forth of discussion constitute what Gadamer (2004) calls the to-and-fro movement of the dialogue game. The game provides the intrinsic motives that draw participants into this movement and provoke their next move. The matrix of social interaction, itself extended in the course of discussion, provides the necessary context for continued engagement. 

I invite you to share your reaction to these thoughts. If you find any of what I have said confusing, please say so, and feel free to ask any questions.

Cindy

References

Feenberg, A. (1989) The written world. In R. Mason & A. Kaye (Eds.), Mindweave: communication, computers, and distance education (pp. 22-39). Oxford: Pergamon.

Gadamer, H.G. (2004). Truth and method (2nd ed). London ; New York : Continuum.

Hi,

Sylvia has prompted me to provide an example of using Marginalia to write weaving messages. I thought I would use this message to demonstrate one way of doing this.

There are only two messages posted under this thread, but still many good points are raised about the importance and functions of weaving/summary messages. In particular, I have marked a few points jumped at me, commented on them, and quoted them in the following using Marginalia. (You may see these annotations by selecting "All annotations" option on the Marginalia drop down menu at the upper right corner of the screen.)

Nick Kearney wrote,

add the role of one (or more) independent weavers

Cindy follows: e.g., one collects all the resources mentioned, one summarizes the emerging themes, one identifies the disagreements, and one summarizes the summaries.

Nick Kearney wrote,

This role should be external

Cindy says: However, an internal discussant maybe easier to recruit as a weaver. She is likely more aware and sensitive to the context and dynamics of the discussion.

Sylvia Currie wrote,

an evolving summary makes more sense than something that is done at the end of an event

Cindy says: Agree! Such summary messages advance a dialogue rather than just end it.

As you can see this is a quick way of drawing on the salient points in a discussion and putting them together in a single message. I could further make connections between these points, draw inferences, and raise more questions for further discussion, but I'm going to stop here. I hope this gives you an idea on how to leveraging Marginalia in facilitating the writing of weaving messages, an often difficult and time-consuming yet important task as we all know.

Cindy

The following is a series of quotes from Arnold Pacey, Meaning in Technology. Read them, mark the parts you agree or disagree, and comment on them.

"Much technology has been “conceived and applied in the context of war and oppression”, yet many still want to think of it as morally neutral, as if it bore no mark of its origins."

". . . much is said about the impact of computerization, as if we were dealing with something that has come on us like a meteorite from nobody knows where. The reality is that the source of this technology is as much human as other major intentions. Like literacy, printing, firearms, bicycles, and automobiles, computers are self-revealing inventions. It is what we learn from them about ourselves – our impulses, purposes, abilities, and potential – that makes these technologies seem revolutionary."

"[airplanes] with propellers _behind_ the wings working propulsively, and one Cessna design of 1961 with a tractive propeller at the front of the body and a propulsive one at the back. Other options that have scarcely ever been used include the canard design, with the stabilizer at the front rather than forming a tail. This design could have weight-saving advantages. . . . some pilots rejected . . . the 1961 Cessna whose exceptional lateral stability made it seem too safe and easy to fly. . . . “the kind of safety given by this aircraft . . . did not fit the male image that a pilot has”. Conventional aircraft shapes also seem to have social meaning fro the general public denoting reliability and efficiency. It has become difficult for designers to depart from a conventional symbolism . . ."

Thank you Norm for your wonderful explanations. I feel like inviting my whole class to this discussion. I'm teaching a grad course on educational program evaluation this term. Inevitably, we got onto the topic of research paradigms and methods. In my attempt to explain some of the basic concepts and to supply something more fun than just text during a Friday evening class discussion, I showed the students this YouTube video that gives

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsuFiZ5aqt8&NR=1

My students all liked it, I wonder how you think of it.

Talking about post-modernism, Lyotard, and meta-narratives, I started reading David Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity. How captivating!

Cindy