Evaluating an Online Professional Learning Community as a Context for Professional Development in Classroom-based Research

Abstract

This study examines how an online training into teacher research has been evaluated in relation to the three main elements of the community of inquiry framework (CoI): teaching, social, and cognitive presences. We held the online training as a part of TESOL’s Electronic Village Online (EVO) and offered a course on how teacher research can be conducted. A survey was administered to elicit the perceptions of 27 volunteering teacher researchers regarding how social, cognitive and teaching presences within the framework of CoI support professional development of teachers, and to examine how CoI presences correlate with overall satisfaction in this research-based professional development online course. In addition to quantitative measures including means, modes and standard deviations, we analysed the data through the Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient on SPSS to explore the correlation between the degree to which each of the three presences supported these teachers in their professional development. Findings imply that participants held highly positive perceptions towards cognitive, social and teaching presences of CoI and that these different aspects of the framework correlate positively with the overall course satisfaction. Moreover, there are important implications for instructional design of online professional development programs using the CoI framework and maintaining effective online research mentoring practices.