Never have I seen so many different definitions of presence as in IDEL week 10. 

The Lombard and Ditton (1997) article goes very in depth with the concept of presence, in the end however, their concept is a rather technical one: "the perceptual illusion of nonmediation" when it comes to users interacting which either other through media or users interacting with media. Learning is only mentioned very briefly twice. The first one is virtual reality systems for skills training, the second mentioning is about the memory effects of media use, where the effects are inconclusive, it can either enhance or reduce memory. I wish anybody could tell me the relevance of this core reading for the IDEL course. What was it that I was supposed to learn from this article? What did I miss?

The Garrison and Anderson reading is a useful follow up to my blog post in week 6 and 7 where I discussed Sanger versus Adler and Brown, since it looks at learners as both individual "independent thinkers" and "interdependent, collaborative learners". I also like the following quote: "It is a serious mistake to categorize teaching and learning in terms of extreme positions."   (p. 23) which echoes the week 8 and 9 discussion we had about a flatter hierarchy between teachers and students. This is carried on in the description of a community of inquiry as "teacher guided, non-authoritarian community" (p. 27). At first, I found the concepts of social, cognitive and teaching presence confusing, in that I found the use of the word presence here confusing - and, completely different from the way in which Lombard and Ditton use the term. This confusion can only be reduced by thinking of the highly abstract model of a community of inquiry, presented by Garrison and Anderson, as a group of students and teachers that interact which each other. Table 3.1 describing the community of inquiry in terms of presences, categories and indicators seems to me an example of an overall learning / teaching framework that I have been looking for since I started this course. It might be useful as an overall high level blueprint when designing learning environments. At the same time, I wonder whether this framework is not highly influenced by an idealized class room metaphor.

Garrison and Anderson's abstract model comes to life in the Stodel et al. (2006) article. One can also read this article as giving practical recommendations when setting up e-learning environments. However, the extremely low number of students participating in this qualitative research (10) and the heavy gender bias (9 females, one male) should make one cautious in generalizing any results from this research. 

These shortcomings are not present in the Shea, Li, and Pickett (2006) article that report quantitative research on a much larger sample (and, in passing, the whole idea of a net generation is effectively refuted once again). Shea et al. also ground their research very broadly by referring to work by Bransford (new to me), Chickering and Gamson (mentioned quite frequently at the Educause 2001 conference in Indianapolis that I attended, IIRC, they also wrote an article about how these principles could guide setting up e-learning environments), and, again, Garrison and Anderson. Again the community of inquiry framework is brought to life in that they develop a Teaching Presence Scale to measure the different aspects of this concept. The overall conclusion that "a strong and active presence on the part of the instructor, one in which he or she actively guides and orchestrates the discourse, is related both to students' sense of connectedness and learning." (p. 185) is an important one. Although it is not a completely unexpected result, it has some interesting implications. One is that it emphasizes the importance of the teacher in the learning experience. Such a result could be useful to counter arguments that the role of the teacher will diminish in e-learning environments. Another implication has to do with scalability - if students in an online environment require the same amount of attention, and thus time, by their tutors as in an offline environment one wonders whether there might be some economic advantages to e-learning. On the other hand, reading the Stodel et al. articles and the comments of the students in there, one might also wonder whether this is such a surprise: students seem to basically ask their teachers to replicate the class room experience in an online environment. Our ideas of what teaching and learning are, or ought to be, are obviously deeply rooted. 

It's the same experience I had in developing digital libraries over the past 20 years, libraries are deeply associated with physical books in peoples' minds. And trying to replicate these physical environments in e-environments  leads to weird results - the way the Garrison and Anderson book was available through the MyILibrary interface was a prime example of this. True innovation can only happen when we go past our deeply rooted ideas of what a thing, an activity should be.

Garrison, D. and Anderson, T. (2003), Community of inquiry, chapter 3 of E-learning in the 21st century (London: RoutledgeFalmer) pp.22-31

Lombard, M. and Ditton, T. (1997), At the Heart of It All: The Concept of Presence. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 3 (2)

Shea, P., Li, C. S. and Pickett, A. (2006), A study of teaching presence and student sense of learning community in fully online and web-enhanced college courses. The Internet and Higher Education , 9(3)

Stodel, E. et al. (2006). Learners' Perspectives on What is Missing from Online Learning: Interpretations through the Community of Inquiry Framework. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 7 (3)