Learning presence as a moderator in the community of inquiry model

This study of over 2000 US college students examines the Community of Inquiry framework (Col) in its capacity to describe and explain differences in learning outcomes in hybrid and fully online learning environments. We hypothesize that the Col model's theoretical constructs of presence reflect educational effectiveness in a variety of environments, and that online learner self-regulation, a construct that we label "learning presence" moderates relationships of the other components within the Col model. Consistent with previous research (e.g., Means, Toyama, Murphy, Bakia, & Jones, 2009; Shea & Bidjerano, 2011) we found evidence that students in online and blended courses rank the modalities differently with regard to quality of teaching, social, and cognitive presence. Differences in help seeking behavior, an important component of self-regulated learning, were found as well. In addition, results suggest teaching presence and social presence have a differential effect on cognitive presence, depending upon learner's online self-regulatory cognitions and behaviors, i.e. their learning presence. These results also suggest a compensation effect in which greater self-regulation is required to attain cognitive presence in the absence of sufficient teaching and social presence. Recommendations for future research and practice are included. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.