Online community is an important part of an effective online classroom, but it can often be difficult to establish. This is true regardless of the modality. One of the most commonly used frameworks for building an effective online community is the Community of Inquiry framework (Fiock, 2020; Garrison et al., 1999). The community of inquiry framework highlights three main areas: teaching presence (related to facilitating learning), cognitive presence (related to making meaning of content), and social presence (related to expressing oneself in the online environment). Social presence is associated with course satisfaction as well as the perceived learning (Richardson & Swan, 2003). As such, social presence is the glue that holds the framework together and is enhanced by the development of a sense of community in the online classroom.
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