Building bridges to advance the Community of Inquiry framework for online learning

The COVID-19 pandemic forced institutions of higher education around the world to quickly transition to forms of distance education, including synchronous and asynchronous online learning. Often lacking conceptual, empirical, and practical understanding of online pedagogy, many institutions have met this endeavor with mixed success. It seems inevitable that online learning will continue to play a key role in all sectors of education and, accordingly, that online pedagogy deserves a more mainstream focus. To help build a joint understanding of foundational knowledge between the online learning, educational technology, and educational psychology communities, in this article, we summarize the most frequently cited conceptual model that shapes research and practice in the field of higher education online learning: the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework. We describe the original CoI model and its foundational components (i.e., cognitive, social, and teaching presence) and highlight opportunities for improvement of the model by incorporating the educational psychology and learning sciences research base to inform: (1) conceptualizations of the social dimensions of collaborative learning and (2) understanding of learner contributions to online collaborative education including self-, co-, and shared regulation of learning. We propose that a new, more comprehensive conceptualization of the regulation of collaborative online learning be integrated into the existing CoI framework and that a new “presence” be referenced going forward—“Learning Presence.” Through this work, we strive to develop a more nuanced, generative, and informed vision of the future of online learning informed by relevant contemporary conceptualizations in educational psychology.