Denise K. Sommers
University of Illinois at Springfield



Using the Community of Inquiry Survey to Assess Teaching, Social, and Cognitive Presence and Make Subsequent Improvements to Online Courses


Thanks to the growth and development of online programs, higher education is more accessible to prospective students regardless of where they live. The sophistication of online courses has grown over the past decade largely due to the abundance of research. Ongoing research propelled the development of the Garrison, Anderson, and Archer1 Community of Inquiry (CoI) Model which described the interaction or relationship among teaching presence, cognitive presence, and social presence when designing and teaching online courses. The author of the article used CoI Model and Survey to assess student perceptions of teaching, cognitive, and social presence as well as their perceptions of the effectiveness of individual online classes. The article presents the survey results.

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