The document discusses improving learning through forming a community of inquiry. It describes a community of inquiry as having three key elements - social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence. Social presence involves open communication, group cohesion, and personal relationships. Cognitive presence is a recursive process involving puzzlement, information exchange, connecting ideas, and testing solutions. Teaching presence provides design, facilitation and direction. Forming a community of inquiry can help learning become an active process of questioning and understanding through interaction, rather than just memorizing answers.

1. Study skills:
Improving Learning through
The formation of
a Community of Inquiry
The importance of inquisitive mind and the value
of supporting social presence in a learning
environment

2. Learning Outcomes
• To enable students to appreciate that learning is less about being able to
cite the right answers but more about actively being engaged in the
process of learning.
• To empower students through proper understanding to appreciate and
utilize both collaborative learning and private study within i3L community
• To encourage students not to be ashamed of asking questions in their
study and to develop critical thinking and a genuine sense of curiosity in
their intellectual endeavor that they will retain well beyond the narrow
confines of their formal education.

3. Ludwig Boltzmann
(February 20, 1844 – September 5, 1906)

4. Outline
• Learning as a process of inquiry
• Development of Learning through the
formation of a Community of Inquiry
• Elements of a Community of Inquiry
• Summary

5. Recent Development in Learning Theory
• Constructivist Theory
• Meaning should not be constructed in isolation.
• Improving the learning process qualitatively
through the application of critical thinking and
interaction

6. Learning through the process of inquiry
• Application of critical thinking through inquiry
• An inquiry is any process that has the aim of
augmenting knowledge, resolving doubt, or
solving a problem.
• It is essential that students be ACTIVELY engaged
in the PROCESS OF INQUIRY in their learning.
Why?

7. Learning through the process of inquiry
Because…
When action is divorced from thought, teaching
becomes information transmission by a kind of
scholastic pipeline into the mind of the pupils
whose business is to absorb what is transmitted
(Dewey & Childs, 1981, pp. 88-89)

8. Learning through the process of inquiry
Able to answer anything…
it has been programmed to
Able to find solutions or recognize
patterns as long as the required
information is made available
Unable to find creative solution or to
complete the picture of understanding.
In fact it lacks understanding of things.
It is merely able to compute even when the
computation is meaningless albeit
correct.
You’re much more than a computer,
So don’t behave as if you were a
computer.
It is okay not to know, we can find out
It is okay to be wrong,
take lessons from them
It is more important to know why than
to be able to remember the correct
answer

9. Learning through the process of inquiry
• Two fundamental ways to qualitatively
improve your learning: application of critical
thinking and interaction
• One way to practice critical thinking is by
actively engaging your mind through the
inquiry process.

10. Learning through the process of inquiry
• Interaction to improve learning can be practiced in the presence of
a community of learning
• For optimum learning, higher education experiences are best
conceived as communities of inquiry.
• A community of inquiry describes intellectual exchanges between
all involved in the process of learning i.e, between the students
themselves and between students and the instructors.
• A community of inquiry is inevitably described as the ideal and
heart of a higher education experience.

11. A Community of Inquiry
• A community of inquiry is characterized by:
Purposeful, open, and disciplined critical
discourseand reflection.
• Thus educational inquiry is both a reflective
and collaborative experience.

12. 1. Purposeful, open, and disciplined critical
discourse
• Purposeful:
First, learning is a process to investigate problems and
issues—not to memorize solutions.
Learning is focused on intended goals and learning
outcomes.
Learning must be purposeful, but flexible, to explore
unintended paths of interest.

13. 1. Purposeful, open, and disciplined critical
discourse
• Open:
The individuals must have the freedom to explore ideas,
and to question and construct meaning.
If learning is to be a process of inquiry, then it must focus
on questions, not just on answers.
Learners must be free to follow new leads, to question
public knowledge, to explore questions and to construct
and confirm resolutions collaboratively.

14. 1. Purposeful, open, and disciplined critical
discourse
• Disciplined (self-control):
Educational experience is a commitment to
scholarship.
It requires the discipline to interact academically
and respectfully with members of the
community as they engage in the pursuit of
common goals.

15. Second character of CoI: Reflection
• To Reflect: is to think deeply or carefully about something.
• To ‘take in’ what has been collaboratively discussed.
To construct meaning.
• To tie in loose ends and make sense of what has been
discussed or debated. To get a picture of understanding. A
personal review or trace back.
• It’s a personal activity involving self

16. Three elements that are present in a Community of
Inquiry
• The three elements present in a Community
of Inquiry are:
Social Presence,
Cognitive Presence,
Teaching Presence

17. The three elements in a Community of Inquiry

18. Social Presence
• Students in a community of inquiry must feel
free to express themselves openly in a risk-
free manner.
• They must be able to develop the personal
relationships necessary to commit to, and
pursue, intended academic goals and gain a
sense of belonging to the community.

19. Social Presence
• The formal categories of social presence are:
Open communication, enabling open and purposeful discourse
Group cohesion, enabling collaboration
Affective/personal relationships, developing camaraderie
• These categories are progressive in the sense that
they establish, sustain, and develop a
community of inquiry.

20. Social Presence
• What are the factors that make Social
Presence to work as a community?

21. Cognitive Presence
• Cognitive presence is a recursive process that
encompasses:
States of puzzlement
Information exchange
Connection of ideas
Creation of concepts
Testing of the viability of solutions

22. Practical Inquiry Model to represent Cognitive
Presence

23. Bloom’s Taxonomy

25. Teaching Presence
• In an educational context, teaching presence
is essential to bring all elements together and
ensure that the community of interest is
productive.
• Teaching presence provides the design,
facilitation, and direction for the educational
experience.

26. Matching Learning Outcomes
• Introduction to Life Sciences, Molecular &
Cellular Biology, General & Organic Chemistry
• Show good understanding of meiosis and mitosis
• Explain the structure and reaction mechanism of
various organic compounds
• Account for different theories of disease and
immunity to disease

27. The three elements in a Community of Inquiry

28. Community of Inquiry -- Summary
• Learning is a process to investigate problems and issues—
not to memorize solutions.
• If learning is to be a process of inquiry, then it must focus
on questions, not just on answers.
• Understanding is enhanced through interaction in the
community.
• Personal relationships may be an artifact of a successful
community of inquiry although they are not the primary
goals.

29. Community of Inquiry -- Summary
• Sustained communities of inquiry are
dependent upon purposeful and respectful
relations that encourage free and open
communication.
• Teaching presence gives direction and
facilitation in a community of inquiry to
ensure it stays on the proper purpose.

30. Community of Inquiry -- Summary
• By focusing on the process of inquiry,
higher-order thinking and learning
emerge.
• Higher-order thinking is being conceptually
rich, coherently organized and persistently
exploratory (Lipman, 1991)

31. Community of Inquiry -- Summary
• The process of inquiry requires considerable
intellectual discipline and through the
discipline of inquiry, participants acquire the
attitudes and skills to become critical thinkers
and to continue their learning BEYOND THE
NARROW SCOPE AND TIME LIMIT OF A
FORMAL EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE.

32. Welcome to i3L
I wish you a thrilling intellectual journey
and
for you to seize future opportunities with
intellectual ingenuity and finesse through
academic excellence