Review by: Rapanta, Chrysi (2008-11-21)

The book ‘E-Learning in the 21st century’ is written by two Canadian authors, specialists in Educational Psychology and also professors in Higher Education. This twofold identity of its authors shows up in the double character of the book: theory and practice of e-Learning are combined and explained in such an integrative way, that many times the reader wonders if she reads a philosophical essay on educational technology or a practical guide dedicated to help professors in the knowledge society.

The book’s main goal is to provide a framework for understanding the application of e-Learning in Higher Education. In order to realize this, the authors adopt a transactional perspective of teaching and learning. They analyze both by embedding them in a critical community of learners, or, commonly said, a ‘community of inquiry’. This is a community where both reflection and discourse are utilized to facilitate the construction of personally meaningful and socially valid knowledge.

In the case of planning and delivering an e-Learning experience, the creation of a community of inquiry should also be the main educational goal. According to the authors, three key elements have to be considered: the cognitive presence, the social presence and the teaching presence. In the first part of the book (Chapters 1-7), Anderson and Garrison describe the theoretical and conceptual framework of these three presences in an e-Learning community of inquiry, while in the second part (Chapters 8-11), they give some guidelines for practice, assessment and future applications.

With the term ‘social presence’ they refer to “the ability of participants to project themselves socially and emotionally, as real people, through the medium of communication being used” (p. 49). From this definition we can induce two main implications: first, that sharing socio-emotional feelings is innate to the communicative functionality and cohesion of a community of inquiry and second, that the medium is very important and defines the ‘reality’ of the communication, in terms of interaction and continuity, using Dewey’s words.

Although social presence does provide the basis for respectful questioning and critique, according to Anderson and Garrison, it is always the cognitive and teaching presence that take the community beyond the largely social function to one of inquiry. As cognitive presence they define “the extent to which learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse’’. Given that reflective and discursive activities cannot be separated in practice, the authors offer a model of practical inquiry consisting of explicit cognitive events, such as triggering, explorative, integrative and events of resolution. They also provide some example-indicators of each one of the cognitive phases/events, facilitating in this way the application of this model in research.

Last but not least, the teaching presence is of critical importance. This is where the paradigm shift proposed by e-Learning becomes obvious: the roles of teacher and learner are difficult to distinguish, because in a community of inquiry everyone is a learner, in the sense of being open to new experiences, and everyone is a teacher, in the sense of self-dependency and motivation of his/her own learning processes. The appearance of the teaching presence becomes explicit through three different roles: ‘organizator’, ‘facilitator’ and ‘direct instructor’. The design, facilitation and direction of the cognitive and social processes which take place during e-Learning is what makes teaching presence important, as it leads to meaningful learning outcomes.

The second part of the book (Chapter 8-11) begins with some useful guidelines to the e-Learning teacher on how to design, organize and facilitate the educational experience, by promoting social (communicative) and cognitive (learning) elements in the community of inquiry. The teacher’s function, in Anderson and Garrison’s insightful comprehension, should be situated between being ‘a guide on the side’ and a ‘sage on the stage’. Another important function, also attributed to the teacher, is that of evaluating learners’ progress in terms of learning. Although some e-Learning tools provide this possibility of assessment, the authors emphasize the need to evaluate the educational outcomes from a more ‘holistic’ point of view. They give as an example the ‘proactive assessment model’ developed by Roderick Sims (2001) in order to evaluate all significant components of the e-Learning context and intervention.

Finally, some organizational issues regarding e-Learning adoption are touched. The transformative power of e-Learning innovations is already confirmed. The question is how this transformation will be led and managed. The near-future role of Higher Education institutions is to take the lead in prototyping sustainable knowledge-management systems. But again the foundation of a strong community of inquiry seems to be the greatest priority, according to the authors, because it is where ‘new knowledge’ is created, built, and shared.

Only one chapter (4) is completely dedicated to technological awareness, i. e. the question of how and why to use technology for educational purposes. The main contribution of the book regarding this is a very clear presentation of the generations of distance education technology and the different kinds of interaction that were promoted in each one of them. However useful this knowledge is, I would also expect a kind of integration of the technological part with the pedagogical one. This is maybe the only ‘weakness’ of the book that I can mention.

Debriefing, ‘e-Learning in the 21st century’ is a very useful pedagogical handbook, serving to guide both research about and practice with e-Learning. It helps to understand how ‘old terms’ of describing an educational experience can be transformed in concepts easily related to e-Learning practice. Nonetheless, it is important to mention that the guidelines offered are addressed to researchers or to educational professionals already familiar with the use of technologies in their every-day practice.