USING THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL (COI) TO INVESTIGATE THE QUALITY OF ESL STUDENTS’ NARRATIVE WRITING IN AN ASYNCHRONOUS ONLINE DISCUSSION

The study explored the presences that were evident when six students and a teacher’s online interactions were categorized based on CoI model and how these interactions were able to add quality to the students’ narrative essays in an asynchronous online discussion. This study involved six Malaysian ESL students and a teacher interacting in the asynchronous discussion to complete their narrative writing tasks. The interactions were categorized based on social, teaching and cognitive presences suggested by the CoI model. Data were gathered from online archives and narrative essays scores. The findings reaffirm the presences of social and teaching presences although there was a dissimilar pattern for cognitive presence. Additional research outcome were that of emerging themes related to exam-centeredness, teacher-centeredness and online fatique syndrome. The findings suggest that there is a need for intervention and different instructions from the teacher based on the Krathwohl’s adapted version of Bloom’s Taxonomy.


Introduction
The interactions in an online collaborative learning environment can be a powerful means to develop critical thinking skills among learners (Manathungga &Hernandez-Leo, 2015).It allows students to make substantive decisions together and teachers are able to monitor progress, provide feedback to enhance and improve the quality of the students' work.Eventually, students will be able to construct knowledge independently and appear more confident.However, changing the focus from the traditional classroom practice to online collaborative learning environment is not an easy task.It requires great effort and co-operation from teachers and students.It demands a distinctive pedagogical practices as compared to the traditional classroom owing to the asynchronous nature of interactions between teachers and students and among students (Naidu, 2007).A unique set of strategies are therefore required to bridge the distance between educators and learners and develop important presences for desirable pedagogical practices (Barbour, 2013).A claim made by the researchers is that teachers often rely on the online learning for the delivery of content and have not been accompanied by appropriate shifts in pedagogical repertoire and students tend to google for information and writing assignments (Prestidge, 2017).According to Bourgonjon et al. (2013) the increasing ubiquity of technologies in classrooms largely rely on teachers' acceptance and how they recognize and utilize ICT as a learning tool.This aligns with the view of Looi et al. (2014) that the curriculum and teaching practices are responsible for the integration of ICT in the classroom.Realizing this, Levin (2015) has called for investigation on how teachers pedagogical practices and to "study the development of teacher beliefs and whether developmental shifts or patterns can be predicted or supported in some way (p.60).

USING THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL (COI) TO INVESTIGATE THE QUALITY OF ESL STUDENTS' NARRATIVE WRITING IN AN ASYNCHRONOUS ONLINE DISCUSSION
An appropriate model with skills and strategies to bridge the barriers, connect teachers and students to create an effective atmosphere need to be considered by teachers while engaged in the online learning environment.To explore this possibilities, the CoI model (Garrison et al., 2000) which integrates three online presences: teaching, social and cognitive presences were used as a framework to analyze the interactions of students from an urban school in Malaysia.The model was used to investigate on how three interdependent presences namely teaching, social and cognitive presences were evident in the asynchronous discussion when students were given the task to complete their narrative essays.Students essays were further assessed based on Tribble Assessment Scale (1996) to identify whether the interactions were able to enhance the quality of the narrative writing.Athough the CoI model was vastly investigated, there is much to learn when the CoI model is used in different geographical and cultural settings.
Writing in English is often seen as a laborious and difficult task by the Malaysian students and many of them have trouble in organizing their ideas, content, vocabulary and language (Chitravelu, Sithamparam & Teh, 2005).Teachers were not able to teach writing creatively due to time and space constraint in Malaysian classroom (Darus & Ching, 2009).In fact the process approach that have been outlined by the Malaysian syllabus is often neglected (Mukundan, 2011).Furthermore, teachers tend to focus on product approach where students are often guided to mimic a text.Thus, the teaching of the writing skill is very much teacher-centered despite training and syllabus guidelines for the learner centered approach (Abbas, Shahran & Che Lah, 2011).An online writing environment featuring online interactions and collaboration without time and space constraints may provide conducive environment to enhance their writing skills in English.Thus in this study, Facebook was used as a writing platform.
In Malaysia, Facebook is a popular networking site with 1.59 billion monthly active users in 2016.
The study was guided by the following research questions: i.
What are the presences that were evident when the CoI model was used in completing the narrative writing task in the asynchronous discussion?ii.
What are the scores for aspects related to vocabulary, language, organization, content and mechanics after the interactions in the asynchronous discussion

Literature Review
The CoI model integrates three interdependent presences: cognitive, teaching and social presences.The central base of CoI model is the inquiry and deep learning via systematic and planned teaching, interactions and reflection within the online community (Jane et al., 2016).Cognitive presence refers to the extent to which learners are able to create meaning and confirm meaning via continue reflection and discourse (Garrison et al., 2001).It is importantly associated with critical thinking which is the most challenging element to facilitate and determine in the online environment.Social presence highlights the ability of learners to "identify with the community, communicate purposefully in a trusting environment and develop interpersonal relationships by projecting their individual personalities" (Garrison, 2009, p.352).Teaching presence refers to organization, design and facilitation of the social and cognitive processes to realize effective and worthwhile learning outcomes (Anderson et al. 2001).
Although the CoI model has been viewed as a valuable and significant to promote educational community there are also criticisms that ensnared the model.Firstly, Rourke and Kanuka (2009) reviewed seven studies related to the cognitive presence and its phases.They found that higher order thinking skills (integration and resolution phases) were not taking place as suggested by the CoI model and learners were more comfortable remaining at the exploration phase.Other researchers (Luebeck & Bice, 2005;Vaughan & Garrison, 2005), found that integration phase is the most difficult to trace.

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A number of studies made clear that the failure to achieve the higher order thinking skills is because of the ineffective teaching presence (Shea & Bidjerano, 2009;Pisutova-Gerber & Malovicova, 2009;Bangert, 2008).It appears that students engaged in the online discussions are very often are contended to remain at the exploration phase and only attempt to move forward to the resolution phase if they were questioned and challenged to solve problems (Shea & Bidjerano, 2008;Murphy, 2004;Meyer, 2003).Archer (2010) explains that the researchers have been looking for the phases (integration and resolution phases) at the wrong place and students would probably reserve the integration and resolution phases to be included in their assessments.To achieve this aim and to elucidate the resolution phase this study, the researcher in this study, incorporated the assessment of the narrative essays and scores were given to all the essays for the resolution phase.Unlike previous studies, the researchers in this study aimed to go beyond survey, exploring the cognitive presences in a distinctive way.There was also some concerned for continued research related to the presences across various geographical and cultural settings for constructive debates to take place so that the model will be able to grow and progress (Archer, 2010).Additionally, there were calls to investigate the three presences simultaneously since prior research were confined to studies related to one or two presences (Swan and Shih, 2015).All these ideas were incorporated in this study where the three presences were investigated.

Methodology
This study is a qualitative interpretative case study that provides in depth understanding of teaching and learning activities in the online environment without manipulation.It does not generate new theories but to refine them (Reeves & Hedberg, 2003).In this study, a simple quantification is needed to describe the qualitative situation (Pope, 2000) to increase the rigor and the validity of the data (Maxwell, 1992).Scores were given to the students' narrative essays to investigate the quality of the narrative essays before and after their interactions in the online learning environment.

Participants
There were six students and a teacher involved in this study from the northern region of Malaysia.The students were Year 10 students and would be sitting or their public examination in 2018.The teachers have 5-10 years of teaching experience.For the purpose of this study, the students were identified as S1, S2, S3… The participants were students who have no experience in online learning but they are familiar with the use of Internet and Facebook for social purposes.Ethical clearance was obtained from the Research Ethics Committee of Malaysia ( 2016)

Research Procedures
The teacher participant created a group in the close group application in the Facebook environment.
When the teacher approved the students to join the group, students were able to participate.The group is named as Narrative Writing II.The teacher uploads the title, tips and suggestions for each task.The titles of the narrative essays were "Describe the most embarrassing experience you have had" (Task 1), Write a story beginning with "The students were excitedly unloading their luggage"(Task 2) and "Write a story ending with "Tears welled up in his eyes"(Task 3).Students were to instructed to write their individual essays (essay before interaction) and publish in their Facebook.After completing their individual essays, students were to interact with their peers and teacher to add quality to their essays.
Ideas and comments gathered from the interactions should be considered to improve the quality of the essay (essay after the interaction).Each student had to write two essays.The first essay was written before interaction and the second essay was written after interaction.The essay written after interaction should include all the suggestions highlighted in the interactions with peers and teachers.It is hoped that the essays written after interactions will be of a better quality.

Data Collection and Analysis
Data were collected from the participants online interactions related to social, teaching and cognitive presences and scores for the essays.The 568 online archives were gathered and examined in-depth to discern the aspects related to teaching, social and cognitive presences.Colour codings were used for all the presences.Two raters were trained to assess the narrative essays based on Tribble Assessment Scale (1996).The scale was used to assess organization, content, grammar, vocabulary and mechanics.The raters were also the coders of the online archives and were guided on the definitions of the presences and the descriptors so that the coders are familiar and able to categorize the presences accurately to increase confidence and to encourage efficient coding as suggested by Miles & Huberman (1994).Miles and Huberman's (1994) percentage and Cohen kappa inter-rater reliability were employed to measure the agreement between coders in categorizing the online interaction patterns.Three samples of interactions from the pilot study were photocopied for the coders and they were further trained in order to be familiar with the coding scheme.The descriptors of the social, cognitive and teaching presences are illustrated in Table 1.Descriptors for social presences were labelled as SPA 1,SPA2, SPA3 consequently.Teaching presences as TPA1,TPA2,TPA3 and so on, and cognitive descriptors as CPA1,CP2,CP3.

Findings
All the three presences were evident in the asynchronous discussion.From the findings it is clear that the students are taking active roles in their learning activities.There were minimally 8 comments and a maximum of 45 comments per week.Students articulated their ideas, problems and doubts and the peers responded on the related issue.For the social presence (Table 1), there were 182 interactions.There were 97 descriptors related to affective,74 descriptors related to interactive and vocatives with 11 descriptors.Maximum interactions for teacher presence were related to facilitating discourse with 53 online interactions and followed by 20 interactions for direct instruction and 8 interactions for instructional design and organization.
However, certain sub -descriptors were not evident for all the three presences.For example, for social presences, there were no interactions related to continuing SPB1, SPB3, SPB4, SPC1 and SPC2.For teaching presence, there were no interactions related to TPA4, TPA5, TPB2, TPB4, TPB6, TC1and TPC4.
The were 146 interactions for the integration phase, 95 interactions for triggering event and 55 interactions for exploration phase.The score of the essays was used to identify the resolution phase.
The findings of the cognitive presence in this study is dissimilar and distinctive compared to the previous studies related to CoI model.The researcher named the phases in a distinctive way.They were termed as single, dual and triple phases.Table 2 highlights the definitions for the above terms.Single Phase happens when participants give direct solution for the errors found in the essays without much debate or arguments.It only gives solution and do not create deep discussions or negotiation to arrive at the meaning.For example, in the below excerpts the improper use of preposition "at since" was highlighted and immediate solution was given.
A discussion of the use of different prepositions will be worthwhile and participants were able to acquire knowledge related to the use of preparation.However, there were no discussions on the grammatical rules or discussion on the use of prepositions.
There were no negotiations of meaning or discussion of complex ideas or issues.Single phase does not allow further interactions and impede communication.More examples are "we have been best friends since 7 years old.. Nt we are best friends since 7 years old…", "was been arranged to do duty with me = had been arranged" and "some challenging problem= problems".Some archives related to single phase are illustrated in Table 3. Dual phase involves triggering events and integration phases.At this phase, participants identified the problems and solutions were created in a short span of time without any clear explanation of why such answers or ideas should be integrated in the essays.There were no in-depth discussions related to the language events.Table 4 illustrates examples of dual phases.For example, Valentino Belbo highlighted her doubt on the vocabulary "is can or cannot" and the solution were given by Nanthini Manian "' Its CANNOT…CAN NOT is wrong" briefly without any further explanation

C4 Creating Solutions
Triple Phase In the triple integration phase it is found that interactions were related to triggering event, exploration and integration phases.However, the interactions were not vigor enough for students to acquire adequate knowledge related to language or in-depth knowledge related to critical thinking.For example, in the event of 'thinking' the interactions were related on what is the suitable word that should be used in the sentence.
A more worthwhile discussion should be on how 'without thinking', 'without thinking further' and 'without thinking long' should be used in different context or what is the difference of the three expressions.Similarly, in the event of 'experience' or 'experienced' the participants mentioned about different types of tenses, however, a comprehensive discussion and careful consideration of the different tenses would be valuable and meaningful in writing essays.There were no interactions to expand the students thinking.Some examples of triple phases are illustrated in Table 5.Therefore, in this study although students were able to reach the resolution phase that does not mean that students were engaged in the critical meaning as suggested by Garrison et al's.cognitive presence.There were interactions that moved towards this direction but there were no proper interventions from the teacher for students to further enhance and engage in deep discussion as the teacher was not a "guide on the side".

Emerging Themes
Although qualitative study, will have specific objective, research questions, due to its inductive nature, certain new emerging themes and outcomes which are not outlined in the research questions may appear.Some of the themes are discussed in the following section.

Teacher-centredness
The teacher in this study was found to be giving instructions to students on how to correct their essays without any input or interactions from the students.The teacher makes changes to the essays and the participants exclusively listen to the interactions and collaborations were discouraged.This is evident from the lengthy instructions to correct the essays (Table 6).Basically, the traditional classroom teaching is evident in the online environment.
The emerging theme highlights that both teacher and students were concerned about how to excel in public examination.The exam factory environment was evident when students were give suggestions on how to excel in their public examination.

Narrative Writing Scores
At the completion of every narrative essays (before and after interactions) students' essays were marked based on Tribble Assessment Scale (1996).Assessment for the essays was broken down into five categories; content(C), organization(O) vocabulary (V), language(L) and mechanics(M).Content and organization were considered as macro aspects and vocabulary and language and micro were considered as micro aspects.It appeared that students improved for aspects related to vocabulary and language.There was an increase of 2-3 marks in their scores after their interactions in aspects related to language and vocabulary.However, the scores for organization content and mechanics remain the same.Tables 7 illustrates the essay scores for Task 1, 2 and 3.

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The social, teaching and cognitive presences suggested by the CoI model were evident in this study.
The interactions related to social presence allow students to share, compliments each other, share their experience in a more relaxed manner.Consistently, previous studies also suggest that social presence have positive impact on satisfaction and commitment in learning experiences (Swan & Shih, 2005;Richardson & Swan, 2003;Shea, Fredericksen, Pickett, Pelz & Swan, 2001).The teaching presence sets the direction for the interactions and guide the students to complete their tasks.Koh et al. (2010) and Murphy, (2004) have recommended that teachers must consider and comment on students' interactions to assist them in fruitful interactions.As suggested by Shea & Bidjerano (2010, p. 17) teaching presence has the potential to be an "online instructional orchestration" where the teacher effectively makes attempts to achieve learning outcome (Anderson et al. 2001).However, the cognitive presence took a distinctive pattern and dissimilar with previous research.A systematic shift from one phase to another phase to move from lower order thinking skills to higher order thinking skill was not evident in this study.Certain interactions were not related to the descriptors listed in the CoI model.This is because the CoI model suggested by Garrison et al. was used in a synchronous discussion in a forum more than a decade ago.In this study, it is used for narrative writing in an asynchronous discussion in the Facebook environment.As such, certain adaption need to be considered for different approaches.Moreover, it is found that the descriptors do have similar meaning and there is an overlap while categorizing the online archives.Therefore, a clear definition for certain descriptors is needed.
Single phase does not involve constructive interactive and seemed to be didactic instructions and independent work as suggested by Rourke Kanuka(2009).As argued by Pawan et al., 2003 students engaging in 'serial of monologues' where minimal attempts were made to engage students in meaningful and in depth discussion.In the dual phase, students gave suggestions for considerations and exchange ideas at the triggering event phase.However, there were no interactions to extend, verify and encourage was discussed.The lack of direction and assistance had actually impeded the students to move to the integration and resolution stages.It is obvious that the teacher's role was more of ending their interactions by creating solutions.According to Garrison and Arbaugh (2007, p. 161) "teaching presence [need to] to probe and diagnose ideas so that learners will move to higher level thinking in developing their ideas".However, in this study the role of the teachers was confirming rather than encouraging students to explore or delve into the matter.The teacher was not setting the tone to encourage open exchange of thoughts and resources to support students' learning as proposed by Bullen (1998), Berge (1995), Harashim, Hiltz, Teles and Turoff (1995).In fact, the teacher had been too engrossed and concerned with resolving the issues related to the writing task.Such interactions were contradicting with Garrison et al.'s (2001) notion of integration phase where they "require active presence of teachers to diagnose misconceptions, to provide probing questions, comments and additional information in an effort to ensure continuing development and to model the critical process" (p.10).
Such findings are probably related to the nature of the task.Narrative writing unlike argumentative writing is related to creativity, imagination, originality, non-judgemental whereas critical thinking is analytical, judgemental, reasoning, selective, accurate, commonsensical, careful and problem solving (Lipman, 2003;Lewis & Smith, 1993).There higher order thinking is taking place in a minimal level(integration and resolution phase).Nevertheless, critical thinking can be enhanced when students are talking about language aspects such as grammatical rules and organization instead of editing students' essays.It is for this reason that students' writing improved in micro aspects (vocabulary and grammar) and not the macro aspects (content and organization) of the essay.
The interactions in the asynchronous discussion should be designed by considering learners need and careful planning to ensure that the interactions deliver optimal learning experiences.The teacher directed approach continue to dominate in the online environment.The researcher terms such teaching as online 'teacher-centredness'.Tapscott and Williams (2010) has shared the view that learners in the 21 st century teaching and learning activities need to be transformed from being teacher-centered to learner-centered.
The teacher did not have the necessary knowledge and skills to encourage students to achieve a higher level of thinking such as analyzing and evaluating.Higher order thinking skills can be increased if there is intervention introduced during discussion related to cognitive presence.For example, teacher should make it compulsory for students to play an important role in identifying the triggering event.In other words, students must identify whether it is language, vocabulary, organization or content problem.The exploration and integration phases should be mandatory in all discussion.Therefore, this study suggests that Anderson and Krathwohl's (2001) adapted version of Bloom's taxonomy can be integrated with Garrison's cognitive presence.This certainly can lead the critical thinking process to a higher level as desired by Garrison (2000).The different phases of critical thinking skills based on Bloom's taxonomy such as remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create should be integrated in the triggering event, exploration and integration and resolution phases.The emerging themes in this study was related to exam-centredness, teacher-centredness and online fatigue syndrome.These themes should be considered before educators designed the online writing activities.

Conclusion
This exploratory study investigated how the CoI model helped to describe and analyse students and teacher's asynchronous discussion.The study highlighted how students and teachers were engaged in interactions categorized by the researcher as single, dual and triple phases.These phases indicate on how the students are able to add quality to their essays written after the interactions.In doing so, this study enhances the CoI model when it was used in a different setting and for different task.There is a tendency for educators to follow certain models very rigidly.This study suggests that other themes that appear in different settings should also be considered.Further, being online does not only confined to critical thinking, creative thinking should also be considered as demanded by the narrative writing task in this study.In this study, creative thinking was more dominant than critical thinking.Findings from this study will certainly be worthwhile to consider when designing the curriculum for the teacher's training programs for the online learning environment in the Malaysian context.The study provides recommendations to develop teachers' active participation during the cognitive presence.The study dealt with a small sample and therefore does not represent the schools in Malaysia.Future studies should consider with a large population and diverse sample in terms of different subjects and other language learning skills The qualitative data should be complemented by quantitative study in future.

Table 4 :
Online Interaction Pattern of Cognitive Presence for the Event of "Can or Cannot" of Cognitive Presence for the Event of "Stayed at school" of Cognitive Presence for the Event of "Hangout or Hang out"

Table 1 :
Social presence

Table 2 :
Single, Dual and Triple Phases

Table 3 :
Online Interaction Pattern of Cognitive Presence involving Single Phase related to "Sentence Structures and Grammatical Errors"

Table 5 :
Online Interaction Pattern of Cognitive Presence for the Event of "Thinking" Online Interaction Pattern of Cognitive Presence for the Event of "Experience or experienced"