Community of inquiry in an online undergraduate information technology course

The Community of Inquiry theoretical framework suggests that a successful higher education ex-perience is supported by the presence and interaction of the elements of cognitive, social and teaching presences. While the framework has been used for examining quality of educational in-teraction supported by asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies, its applicability to the more discursive educational interaction facilitated by synchronous CMC tech-nology is less known. This paper presents a case of the instructional application of online syn-chronous (chat) interaction in a distance IT undergraduate course from a sociocultural construc-tivist perspective. Results from discourse analysis of chat exchanges and web survey of student learning experiences in moderated virtual tutorials reveal the presence of all three elements in the online learning environment. These findings could guide the pedagogical design of online syn-chronous instructional environments that facilitate collaborative group learning processes in dis-tance education programmes