Bibliographic record
Abstract
This conceptual paper critiques the popular Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework that is widely used for studying text-based asynchronous online discussion. It re-examines the three main aspects of the CoI framework (cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence) and their relationship, and further highlights the specificity and complexity of online discussion forums. The paper argues that CoI underestimates the complex multi-functionality of communicative acts which often combine instruction, knowledge construction, and social interaction in a single utterance. It clarifies the confused relation of cause and effect in the CoI framework and specifies the leadership functions of teaching presence and how they are intertwined with the social and cognitive functions. It argues that social presence goes beyond a mere aspect or component of online discussion; it is the backdrop of everything that goes on. All online utterances are inherently social despite of their apparent intention. The relatively unstructured nature of intellectual engagement is contrasted with the four-stage cognitive development assumed by the CoI framework. The concept of a specifically communicative level of analysis is introduced and a game metaphor and Gadamer’s notion of a “fusion of horizons” employed to explain its workings in online discussion forums. Resume Cette etude theorique critique le populaire cadre de reference sur le Community of Inquiry (CoI) qui est largement utilise pour l’etude des discussions asynchrones en ligne a base de texte. Celle-ci reexamine les trois volets principaux du cadre de reference CoI (presence cognitive, presence sociale et presence enseignante) ainsi que la relation entre ceux-ci. Elle met aussi en lumiere la specificite et la complexite des forums de discussion en ligne. L’article avance que le CoI sous-estime la multifonctionnalite complexe des actions communicatives qui font souvent simultanement appel a l’instruction, la construction du savoir et l’interaction sociale a chaque fois qu’on fait un enonce. L’article clarifie la relation parfois floue entre la cause et l’effet dans le cadre de reference CoI et precise les fonctions de leadership qui sont attribuables a la presence enseignante, ainsi que comment ces fonctions sont entrelacees avec les fonctions sociales et cognitives. L’article avance aussi que la presence sociale est plus qu’un simple aspect ou une simple composante de la discussion en ligne; elle est la trame de fond de tout ce qui se passe. Malgre leur apparente intention, tous les enonces faits en ligne ont par nature un caractere social. On fait la differenciation entre la nature plutot non structuree de l’implication intellectuelle et le developpement cognitif en quatre etapes adopte par le cadre de reference CoI. On presente la notion d’un niveau d’analyse specifiquement communicatif et on emploie une metaphore de jeu ainsi que la notion de « fusion des horizons » de Gadamer pour expliquer les rouages de cette notion dans le cadre de forums de discussion.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.068 | 0.061 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.009 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.096 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.018 | 0.031 |
| Open science | 0.005 | 0.014 |
| Research integrity | 0.013 | 0.013 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".