Our paper got finally accepted, after almost two years of starting working on this study.

Kovanović, V. , Gašević, D., Joksimović, S., Hatala, M., and Adesope, O. (2015). Analytics of communities of inquiry: Effects of learning technology use on cognitive presence in asynchronous online discussions. The Internet and Higher Education, in-press.

Preprint is available for download here.

Abstract:
This paper describes a study that looked at the effects of different technology-use profiles on educational experience within communities of inquiry, and how they are related to the students’ levels of cognitive presence in asynchronous online discussions. Through clustering of students (N=81) in a graduate distance education engineering course, we identified six different profiles: 1) task-focused users, 2) content-focused no users, 3) no users, 4) highly intensive users, 5) content-focused intensive users, and 6) socially-focused intensive users. Identified profiles significantly differ in terms of their use of learning platform and their levels of cognitive presence, with large effect sizes of 0.54 and 0.19 multivariate η 2 , respectively. Given that several profiles are associated with higher levels of cognitive presence, our results suggest multiple ways for students to be successful within communities of inquiry. Our results also emphasize a need for a different instructional support and pedagogical interventions for different technology-use profiles.

Highlights:

1. We investigated technology-use profiles within graduate masters level course in software engineering at Canadian public university, using six offering of the course with the total of 81 students.
2. Our results indicate existence of six different technology-use profiles, which are associated with different levels of cognitive presence – as confirmed by MANOVA analysis and followup ANOVA and DFA analyses.
3. Building on a previous research of Community of Inquiry model, meta-cognition, student technology-use, conception of learning, and motivation, we provide a detailed description of the identified clusters and provide discussion of the impact of our findings on educational research and practice.

Keywords: Community of Inquiry, Learner Profiles, Clustering, Distance Education, Human Agency