Social presence of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model on an online narrative writing platform via Facebook

Abstract

This paper reports a study that investigated the interactions of six students who learnt to write narrative essays in an online writing platform accessed through Facebook. The students were from an urban Chinese school in the state of Penang, Malaysia. Qualitative data in the form of online interactions in the collaborative learning environment by six students and a teacher were collected from a closed group created within Facebook. The interactions were coded based on descriptors related to social presence in the Community of Inquiry (CoI) Model by Garrison, Archer and Anderson (2000). The participants were also interviewed to investigate their experiences while they were engaged in the online narrative platform. Findings indicated that the social presence suggested by the CoI model was present in the interactions during students’ engagement with the online narrative writing platform. However, there were certain descriptors suggested by the model that are not applicable in the context of this study. An additional descriptor was found to emerge in this study. This descriptor is termed by the researchers as social learning presence. Interviews revealed that the participants viewed the Facebook environment as a good avenue to improve writing.