I think about a community of inquiry as a state of being as a team where each individual in the team contributes to each others’ individual learning in a meaningful way by being actively engaged and responsive. A community of inquiry is also what we have aimed for in the ONL course. Based on my experiences from the ONL course, I dare to say that such a community is not built over night – not even  when the course has been designed with such an aim in mind.

Three different presences constitutes the prerequisites for a community of inquiry to form; cognitive presence, social presence and teaching presence. Although, Vaughan et al. (2013)  do not suggest so, I tend to think about the cognitive presence as the first kind of presence to form – given that the concept is broadened. Cognitive presence, in my interpretation, includes starting to think actively about the course. Referring to the ONL course, I was cognitively present before the course even started as I tried to make sense of the information on the webpage and making sure that I had created accounts for all the tools to be used. When we, as a team, started to discuss the first scenario, we as a team exhibited cognitive presence and hence, this formed the basis of social presence as we tried to create a basis for open communication and trust. By the way, open communication and trust constitute each other. Teaching presence brings together social and cognitive presence to create meaningful learning. What this learning is differs between the individuals in the team – although they share the same experience of trying to create a community of inquiry, what they learn from the experience differ. Therefore, I also think that emotional presence, e.g. in the form of empathy, is important as it lets individuals change perspective and thereby contribute in meaningful ways to learning outcomes which are different from their own.

To me, the community of inquiry framework makes no sense however without some more hands-on suggestions for how it can be designed – and designed step-wise. Therefore, both Gilly Salmon’s five stages framework and other similar frameworks are important to consider in order to be able to design for a community of inquiry. I write ”design for” since as a teacher – or co-learner if you prefer – you can only design and support with the aim of a community of inquiry in mind but the team members all have to contribute an be present in different ways if a community of inquiry will form. Regardless of whether you are in an online, off-line or blended setting – the students, the learners, must be engaged to make the best of the educational offer.