Comm of Inquiry

eLearning Experience
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My eLearning experience is from a short online course I took to improve my transferable skills about a year ago. From the experience, one would conclude that eLearning is not as effective as learning in the traditional classroom environment. My experience agrees with the findings by DeNoyelles, Zydney, and Chen (2014) that most people who enroll in online courses end up dissatisfied with the experience.
The Community of Inquiry framework (CoI) assumes that for an effective learning process to take place there has to be the development of a learning community (Richardson et al., 2012). My eLearning experience can be understood in the light of the CoI presences. These are cognitive, teaching and social. Social Presence refers to developing an environment in which the participants of the online course feel attached to one another socially and emotionally (Kozan & Richardson, 2014). Cognitive presence in relation to the online course would refer to how the students are able to gain meaning through discourse and reflection. Teaching presence refers to how the two presences described above are facilitated, designed and directed to achieve to achieve learning (Draus, Curran & Trempus, (2014).
The eLearning experience was challenging in several ways. In terms of cognitive presence, the issues that needed to be solved were well identified and explored. Integration, however, was not satisfactory (DeNoyelles, Zydney & Chen, 2014).

In terms of social presence, there was very little room for students to express themselves socially and emotionally. Self-disclosure, collaboration, and emotional expression were very low throughout the online course (Kozan & Richardson, 2014). In terms of teaching presence, one would say that the course was well designed, facilitated and directed but failed to achieve optimal learning outcomes since the three presences are interrelated. Had the social presence been more improved the eLearning experience would have been much more satisfactory.
References
DeNoyelles, A., Zydney, J. and Chen, B. (2014). Strategies for creating a community of inquiry through online asynchronous discussions. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 10(1), 153- 165.
Draus, P., Curran, M. and Trempus, M. (2014). The Influence of Instructor Generated Video Content on Student Satisfaction With and Engagement in Asynchronous Online Classes. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 10(2), 240-254.
Kozan, K. & Richardson, J. C. (2014). Interrelationships between and among social, teaching, and cognitive presence. Internet & Higher Education, 2168-73.
Richardson, J., Arbaugh, J., Cleveland-Innes, M., Ice, P., Swan, K., and Garrison, D. (2012). Using the community of inquiry framework to inform effective instructional design. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 10(1), 97- 125.