Online Interest Groups: Virtual Gathering Spaces to Promote Graduate Student Interaction

Conceptual Framework And Literature Review

The project was guided by the Community of Inquiry (COI) framework described by Rourke, Anderson, Garrison, and Archer (1999). The COI framework highlights three major dimensions of the online learning environment that overlap to form the educational experience of the student: social presence (interpersonal connection), cognitive presence (construction of meaning through communication) and teaching presence (facilitation of active learning). Of these dimensions, social presence is the most relevant to this project.

Social presence is defined as the ability of learners to project themselves socially and emotionally in a community of inquiry (Rourke et al., 1999). Social presence includes feeling comfortable, safe and willing to accept both support and differing points of view (Anderson, (2005). Rourke et al. suggest that social presence increases academic, social and institutional integration, resulting in increased persistence and course completion. There are a number of studies that have supported this suggestion, concluding that social presence is created in online learning environments and contributes positively to learning, satisfaction and persistence in online learning (Aragon, 2003; Mayne & Wu, 2011; Melrose & Bergeron, 2006; Richardson & Swan, 2003; Russo & Benson, 2005; Swan & Shih, 2005; Tu, 2002). On the other hand, feelings of isolation can be exacerbated when students do not feel a sense of social presence or when they do not feel that they are part of a community (Jung, 2001).