Extending the community of inquiry framework to a synchronous instructional approach in a Chinese University

Little research has been conducted to extend the Community of Inquiry framework (Garrison et al., 2000) to teaching an entire course. This paper reports an explorative study of a synchronous online instructional approach to connecting Chinese students at remote locations with those in university campuses for enrichment of their educational experience. The students’ and the instructor’s educational experiences were examined with a qualitative approach. Teaching, social and cognitive presences were contextualised as three interrelated instructional components in a computer-aided engineering drawing course. The results unveil that (1) the CoI framework could be transformed as an online instructional approach; and (2) the facilitation of online inter-group communication was challenging. Implications for understandings of the interrelationship between the instructional components are discussed. Copyright © 2013 American Educational Research Association (AERA 2013).