Investigating how a blended learning approach can support an inquiry process within a faculty learning community

This study investigated how a blended learning approach could support an inquiry process within a faculty learning community (FLC). Garrison, Anderson and Archer's (2000) community of inquiry framework was used to frame the research. A naturalistic inquiry approach (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) was used to conduct surveys and content analysis to detect changes in social, teaching and cognitive presence within two FLC study groups at a Canadian community college. Qualitative techniques such as the construction of visible knowledge (concept) maps, individual interviews and focus groups were used to gain additional insight, from the participants' perspectives, about the changes in social, teaching and cognitive presence that occurred throughout the study. The findings from this study suggest that the nature of the social and teaching presences within a FLC, with a face-to-face and online component, change over time in order to support the development of a complete cognitive presence. Social presence evolves from one of affective communication to group cohesion as trust and respect are established within the community. For the element of teaching presence, the responsibility for maintaining this presence becomes shared amongst the members of a FLC over time. In terms of the four phases of cognitive presence, a comparison of the face-to-face and computer mediated discussion forum transcripts indicate that: a slightly higher percentage of triggering events occurred in the face-to-face discussions; exploration was the dominant phase in both environments; a noticeably greater percentage of comments were coded for integration in the computer mediated discussions and the resolution/application phase was almost non-existent in both forms of discussion. The results from this study imply that an increased emphasis should be placed on the teaching presence within a blended FLC in order to ensure that participants achieve a sense of resolution/application. Learning activities should be intentionally designed to attain this phase, face-to-face and online learning environments should be structured to complement each other, and the FLC coordinator should consistently focus on providing direct instruction strategies, which enable the participants to move forward in their inquiry process.