Cognitive Presence
The final factor in the community of inquiry model is cognitive presence, the “exploration, construction, resolution and confirmation of understanding through collaboration and reflection” (Joo et al., 2011, p. 1655). In other words, cognitive presence is the intellectual and mental effort and processes required for learning. As cognitive presence is linked to collaboration and reflection, it is heavily influenced by the communication strategies and methods used within the course (Garrison et al., 1999).
With online courses, it can sometimes be easy to passively consume content and get to the end of the course without truly learning. The MOOC is structured in a way that requires active engagement from the learner, and therefore, cognitive presence.
Every section of the course ends with a practice activity that serves as a knowledge check and helps students confirm their understanding of the concept. Some of these practice activities include:
- Pairing activities which require the learner to match two related concepts, or pair together to parts of a phrase
- Sequencing activities in which the learner must put the words in the correct order to figure out the phrase or sentence that describes a concept
- Sorting activities require the learner to categorize items, such as sorting habits into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ categories, or identifying if certain practices are ‘open’ or ‘closed.’
- Selection activities ask the learner to identify the correct items in relation to the concept presented
- Drag and drop activities in which the learner matches two concepts or phrases
The variety of different practice activities available helps enhance cognitive presence, as the learner does not feel as though the activities are repetitive. Many activities essentially ask the learner to perform the same type of cognitive tasks, but the different structure of the activity makes it seem new and different. However, some activities require greater cognitive presence than others, and are better suited to helping a learner check their understanding. Sequencing activities, for example, as well as some pairing activities, often assess a learner’s ability to string together a coherent sentence more than they assess their knowledge of the content.
Every section of the course also ended with an explore activity. These activities, facilitated via either the discussion board or Padlet, required the learner to provide their perspective on the content, share an example from their life, or find example content from other places on the internet to share with their classmates. These activities forced the learner to actively engage with content; however, since this was not a graded course, a learner had no feedback on their participation in these activities, and it is possible that examples that they shared were not relevant and correct, but they would never know.
Learners were also provided with the opportunity to check their knowledge of the concepts introduced in a modul