Challenges in a mobile English telecollaborative project: Towards a conceptual model

This paper, drawing upon a mobile telecollaborative project, resonates with the rapid development of technology in language learning. We employed the instant messaging app WeChat to create an English telecollaborative environment for two groups of Chinese students to communicate within. Interview data were triangulated with students’ chat transcripts and comments from a teacher’s reflective journal. A mixed-methods approach, including quantitative descriptive analysis, thematic analysis and content analysis, was used to investigate the challenges and the linguistic performance by applying the community of inquiry framework to the students’ chats. The analysis illustrates some of the complexities and challenges of using online apps as a way of communicating in a second language: students expected more teacher support, they struggled to use the app due to their physical environments and they felt that they were not sufficiently well prepared for chatting in an English medium environment. Based on the findings, a conceptual model is proposed for consideration when encouraging students to engage in telecollaborative learning. Implications for practice or policy: Teachers should enhance their visibility in mobile telecollaborative projects by promoting participants’ contribution through different facilitation techniques. Teachers and educators can capitalise on the proposed conceptual model to guide their own design of such online learning experiences for their learners. Telecollaborative learning can be improved by taking into account various factors such as physical environment, the medium of communication and the potential incentives.

Development of a Game Communities of Inquiry Scale (GCoIS)

This article introduces a new instrument called the game communities of inquiry scale (GCoIS). It was inspired by the community of inquiry framework and its related questionnaires. The purpose of the scale is to explore game communities from an educational perspective. It was validated with 1,275 players inhabiting digital outlets like Twitch.tv, Reddit, and Discord. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were completed, leading to a final scale composed of 14 items subdivided in three subscales: 1) community attractiveness, 2) community receptiveness, and 3) community cognition. The paper describes the development and testing of the instrument. It concludes with implications for scholars and practitioners who can employ this instrument for understanding game communities and their traits.

Designing Online Class using Discord based on Community of Inquiry Framework

COVID-19 pandemic changes the landscape of education, where online learning becomes very important and can not be avoided. Therefore, this article discusses how a gamer's platform, Discord can be used as an interactive online class. A comparison of Discord with other online platforms is spelled out in a tabular form. The principle used to design the online class using Discord is based on Community of Inquiry (CoI). CoI consists of three elements which are teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence for a better educational experience. The design discussed in this article are Discord features design for the online class and class activity using Discord in developing the three elements in CoI. Data collection is done using open-ended surveys. They are 58 respondents with engineering and non-engineering students. Most of the students are familiar with Discord and agreed that Discord can be adapted for an online class. Thematic analysis is conducted to analyze the open-ended questions. The themes that can be identified are parallel channels, structure, all-in-one platform, facilitation, and learning environment. Another analysis is message counts in each student group to show how active the students in online class using Discord. In conclusion, Discord is the best platform to make students active and construct knowledge with peers.

Undergraduate Students Engagement in Formal and Informal Learning: Applying the Community of Inquiry Framework

The purpose of this qualitative case study is to examine the evidence of formal and informal learning of students in an undergraduate educational technology course for preservice teachers. The research question was, “How do undergraduate students in an educational technology course bridge formal and informal learning using Twitter?” The framework for this study was the Community of Inquiry. Directed content analysis was used on data extracted from Twitter. Key findings included, (1) evidence of cognitive, social, and teaching presence for students completing course activities using Twitter, that is, for their formal learning; and that (2) students developed competencies during formal course activities using Twitter that supported cognitive and social presence beyond the course requirements, that is, for their informal learning.

Project-based Community of Inquiry for Effective Online Graduate Course on Life Cycle Assessment

This article aimed to present the improvements on the instructional design of a postgraduate course, namely Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), for effective content delivery in online teaching and learning due to COVID-19 pandemic. The community of inquiry framework was used as the basis for this improvement. It was aided by project-based learning to enhance the educational experiences and improve content delivery efficiency. Conventional active learning teaching pedagogy was maintained in the early part of the course. Next, an open-ended project became the pillar of the second part of the course for performing a comparative LCA in a team. To ensure all students have high individual accountability, each team member performed a LCA study independently for a sub-scope of the project. Meanwhile, their teammates supported each other as each sub-scope is interdependent on the project. WhatsApp was used to promote interactions between students-students and students-instructors to provide just-in-time feedback, and weekly consultations were offered to students to monitor student progress. Based on the course evaluation, the students felt optimistic about the changes. They agreed that these new delivery methods helped them in mastering the subject matter.

Community-based learning in higher education: A portal for knowledge production in the time of COVID-19

At the onset of COVID-19 in 2020, the world-renowned writer and political activist, Arundhati Roy, signalled that the pandemic is "a portal, a gateway between one world and the next . . . [and] we can choose to walk through it." Roy's views highlight how we can imagine our world anew through reflection in the time of COVID-19. In this article, we examine the epistemological experiences of students enrolled in a course in community-based learning (CBL) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and consider how CBL during COVID-19 serves as a portal for understanding knowledge that is produced at the nexus between the university and the community. We deemed the Community of Inquiry framework to be a suitable theoretical lens based on its appreciation of the nexus between social (community), teaching (classroom), and cognitive (critical thinking) elements in an online educational experience. Our findings indicate that COVID-19 provides an opportunity for CBL to serve as a portal for understanding how the students' epistemological experiences during the pandemic influenced knowledge production. This is beneficial since university education most often places at the periphery knowledge that students from the surrounding communities bring to the classroom. It is our contention that students bring epistemic value to the university that is not affirmed during the knowledge production process. We conclude that CBL can indeed serve as the gateway for knowledge production between universities and communities during and beyond COVID-19.