Student Perceptions of Teaching Presence, Social Presence, and Cognitive Presence in a Virtual World

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Date
2011-09Author
McKerlich, Ross
Riis, Marianne
Anderson, Terry
Eastman, Brad
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Show full item recordAbstract
Presence - or having a sense of active participation - in distance education has increased
with the expanding use of and affordances of communications technologies. Virtual
worlds have been on the forefront of popular and education technology in the last three
years and innovative methods of teaching and learning are emerging in these contexts.
Using the recently validated community of inquiry (COI) instrument, this study focuses on
students’ perceptions of teaching, social and cognitive presence in virtual world contexts.
The authors examine whether the COI Instrument can effectively be applied to virtual
world learning events. The results are exciting: in a diverse sample, virtual world learners
perceive teaching presence, social presence and cognitive presence.