During the design and implementation stage of the course, participants were actively engaged with specific learning outcomes which deviated from the learning community and prioritised their own learning and development needs. This focus on a real-life, familiar scenario or problem can be viewed as the first step towards the triggering phase described within cognitive presence. This triggering phase within the course was present throughout and, in particular, during the first and second modules where certain activities were designed and built on concepts around blended learning, engagement and LMS use. However, in Module Three, tangible signs of success and meaningful transformation in terms of understanding blended learning approaches is more evident when participants implemented their blended learning activity with their students.
Developing and supporting teachers’ ability and knowledge to be able to describe and articulate their approach and rationale for designing and implementing their blended learning is a fundamental aspect of understanding online pedagogies and how they can be adopted in teaching. This approach helps to support the second phase of practical inquiry known as exploration, since participants needed to peer review their draft design plans. In this study, incorporating ideas, suggestions and feedback from their peers and facilitator in the peer review process helped participants to modify and refine their blended learning plans. Consequently, this gave participants a greater understanding of the purpose of blended learning, but more importantly challenged their perspectives and beliefs about the blended learning which led to further inquiry and reflection about their practice. This supports Garrison’s (2011) position who viewed this exploration as a process of exchanging information between learners, either through group activities, reflections and ideas either collectively or individually. This also suggests evidence of
the development of an effective learning community whereby participants felt at ease to challenge misconceptions in a group.
This again, suggests some influence of the interconnected nature of social presence on cognitive presence. In particular, the majority of participants valued the benefits and comments they received from the peer review process, and some chose to have the same peers for the online component of the peer review activity.
Garrison (2011) also suggested that during the exploration phase, learners “will experience iteration between the reflective and shared worlds as ideas are explored collaboratively and individuals try to make sense of what may seem to be complexity and confusion” (p. 47). He emphases that this process depicts the true nature of a CoI and goes on to further elaborate that the challenge here is to “monitor and regulate this phase of divergent thinking in such a way that it begins to be more focused in preparation for the next phase” (p. 47).
This study demonstrates the divergent thinking as described by Garrison since participants developed and explored best possible solutions for their blended approach. However, this exploration phase, in the context of their own self-meaning and construction does not appear to be continuous. Exploration in the early stages of the course allowed participants to engage and reflect with each other, however, the real sense of satisfaction and achievement was observed when participants focused on their blended activity. This continuous and developmental cyclic interaction between individual needs (self) and the community’s (shared world) appears explicitly in two instances during the course.
To further analyse, the first time this type of individual reflective and shared world interacts is when participants share their initial blended learning idea. They had only one week to prepare their idea, or several ideas so they could present these to their peers during a face-to-face session. This initial sharing was facilitated in a small group of three people, and was based on Brookfield's, (2017) model for a “Critical Conversation Protocol” (p. 128) to facilitate and enable critical conversations on learning and teaching amongst teachers. The second time is when participants complete their first draft of their blended learning activity and share this with two other peers and the facilitator (mentor as this stage). In both these instances, participants explicitly comment on the benefit and value of these activities. Whilst other more collaborative, group activities appear to have created less impact and response from the participants. However, due to the nature of the course, any deeper or more in-depth interaction in the
exploration phase which focuses on the design of the blended learning activity is relatively short-lived, but this appears to impact the individual in such a way that it helps them to further refine their approach to the design of their blended activity. One suggestion here, is that teaching presence through individual feedback from the facilitator-mentor acted as a strong basis for participants to further critique and reflect on their design.
From this study, there appears to be the possibility that individual needs, at times, can be prioritised, over the community’s shared worlds in a mutually reciprocal manner. This is an interesting idea as it appears to have minimal impact and detriment to the community as a whole, and provides further insight into how an inquiry-based community can be sustained and motivate itself enough to collaborate and move towards the resolution phase of cognitive presence.