Connecting Global Learners Using eLearning and the Community of Inquiry Model

Kimberley Garth-James^1, and Brina Hollis²

¹Academic Program Director, Master Public Administration & Finance, Columbia Southern University

²Academic Program Director, Health Care Administration, Columbia Southern University, Orange Beach, USA

Cite this paper:
Kimberley Garth-James and Brina Hollis. Connecting Global Learners Using eLearning and the Community of Inquiry Model. American Journal of Educational Research. 2014; 2(8):663-668. doi: 10.12691/education-2-8-15

Abstract

As the world grows more interdependent, global citizens, universities, and corporations must develop a new set of tools to work together with international neighbors, friends, and leaders. Many higher education institutions have expanded their campuses across countries, and now require newways to effectively use technological developments for mobile, electronic, and social media learning to support the global community of learners/inquiries. Issues related to connecting students and faculty to learning materials include energy-efficient equipment and shrinking information technology (IT) budgets, making it difficult to produce new high-density servers as well as quality computer-based education. The Community of Inquiry (CoI) model based on the social constructivist theory of John Dewey (1938), and evaluated by Randy Garrison, Terry Anderson, and Walter Archer (2000), indicates that virtual learning communities are dynamic. Essential to the CoI are cognitive, teaching and social presence. Therefore, our research suggests that eLearning proprietary colleges/universities through course design, instruction, and technology create a virtual global learning community experience that is not any hindrance to students’ social, cognitive, and teaching interaction. The research findings reveal the interesting nature of adopting and adapting to the CoI as defined by technology-based course design and faculty engagement, to the online proprietary learning environment worldwide, and our insights may radically change educators’ mostly negative views of distance education. The findings provide a glimpse into proprietary virtual global learning, and reveal how it affects the process of student engagement, reflection, and exploration of concepts for application to the real world.

Keywords:
social presence community of inquiry e-learning global learning constructivist theory virtual librarians students

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