Social Engagement In An Online Community Of Inquiry

This paper examines a multidimensional set of learning-engagement behaviors by students participating in a community of inquiry. Existing social-inquiry models of learning focus on students achieving shared understanding through solving well-structured problems. These models may not be appropriate for professionally-oriented, graduate online education where students derive distributed and partial understandings of ill-structured real-world problems. Findings are presented from a study of joint knowledge-construction in an online graduate IS Management course. Patterns of interactions between learner role-behaviors are examined, to analyze social engagement in debating course problems. We propose that professionally-oriented online courses should frame course-problems to reflect students’ cognitive and professional learning goals. Student engagement in learning may be intensified by the early identification and encouragement of thought-leaders in various domains of professional knowledge who facilitate and complicate community debate. We examine the implications for online learning environments.