Meeting Challenges in Virtual Learning Environments With the Community of Inquiry Framework

Introduction

In March 2020, COVID-19 pandemic precautions unexpectedly thrust U.S. university students into virtual learning environments (VLE) within which many students struggled to succeed while simultaneously losing connectedness with professors and fellow students. While many students over the last twenty years have chosen VLE for their education, many other students have avoided VLE classes at all costs, preferring to form community within classes that have professors teaching face-to-face and fellow students offering in-person support. The responses of higher education institutions to COVID-19 forced these students into VLEs which produced high levels of anxiety as students faced a screen that provided little to no face-to-face contact with professors or classmates. Professors, feeling overwhelmed and with little VLE experience, had to turn face-to-face courses into viable VLEs while students were forced into many more virtual classes than they desired. Frustrations with the VLE format, lack of social interaction, and unexpected teaching challenges grew from these situations for both professors and students. COVID-19 was “at once an accelerant, an irritant, and a stress test” (Brannen et al., 2020). Using the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework (teaching, social, and cognitive presences) forms a bridge which provides both groups a means for communication, community development, and lessened stress. Students’ transversal learning skills (adaptability, digital competencies, collaborative problem solving, and virtual community formation) can develop in a CoI environment which can lead to success in classrooms and then workplaces after graduation. This chapter addresses methods for developing a CoI within virtual classrooms in order to produce viable VLEs that enhance students’ education and transversal skills while reducing professor and student anxieties.

Andrew P. Kelly and Rooney Columbus assess the challenges facing higher education in the “time of coronavirus.” They describe the changes that COVID-19 brought and is bringing to institutions as follows:

Even though in 2018, the percentage of students enrolled in at least one online class had grown to thirty-four percent (“Higher Education Reports,” 2020), students and faculty continue to struggle with these new challenges as more and more classes remain online. One of the main issues for faculty is that “the most effective pedagogical practices are not obvious to teachers because few were students in online classes during their formative years. Furthermore, in the absence of clear guidelines, there is a temptation to withdraw from substantive engagement with the students; it is easier to remind them of the upcoming test than to understand and comment on their contributions” (Xin & Feenberg, 2007, pp. 415-16). The rapidity of the change to VLE left many professors struggling to adapt to the technology and to the change in requirements for online courses. This struggle continues as universities adhere to social distancing requirements. Professors also have had to struggle with their biases against VLE (Xin & Feenberg, 2007, p. 416) in order to adapt to this new format for course delivery.

While many colleges had cutting-edge technology in their online courses, many more colleges were on the periphery for this technology as their typical “student enroll[ed] in a brick-and-mortar institution for face-to-face courses” (Kelly & Columbus, 2020, p. 2). COVID-19 arrived in the U.S. as many schools were empty due to Spring Break. By the end of March, nearly 1,400 institutions had moved their classes to an online format. Faculty rapidly altered assignments, using learning management systems, synchronous classes, recorded lectures, asynchronous classes, and other options. Many faculty members revised their assignments and lowered their expectations for student work. Assignments were dropped and some institutions offered pass/fail alternatives to letter grades. A survey conducted by Chronicle of Higher Education revealed that “a strong majority of faculty and administrators believed these online courses were worse in quality than prior in-person offerings” (Kelly & Columbus, 2020, p. 3).