Examination of Community of Inquiry Model Interdependence in a Fully Online Asynchronous Mastery-Type Course
Abstract
This paper examined the students’ perceptions of teaching, social, and cognitive presence utilizing the Community of Inquiry model as the framework. Mastery-type courses, such as the one measured in this study, are a different course methodology that has positive benefits for learners beyond the increased ability to earn a high letter grade. This study utilized structural equation modeling to confirm a previous study’s findings that students’ perceptions of teaching presence had a significant and positive direct relationship with social presence and cognitive presence. The results also found that as students reported sensing social presence, there was a significant and positive relationship with increased sense of cognitive presence. These results indicate that the activities conducted in the mastery-type course were similar to other studies findings on a broader population.