The Relation Between the Three Dimensions of the Community of Inquiry and the Learning Styles of Students in a Distance Education Programme

Abstract

The aim of this work is to investigate the relation between the dimensions of the Community of Inquiry (COI) model, i.e. teaching, social and cognitive presence, and the students’ learning styles according to the model of Felder and Silverman [6]. A quantitative research was carried out involving 125 postgraduate students of the Hellenic Open University. The teaching presence was observed at a higher degree; in terms of the students’ learning styles the most prevalent were the sensing, visual and active styles. There was a significant positive correlation between the teaching and the cognitive presence as well as between the social and the cognitive presence. Finally, with regard to the correlation between the dimensions of the COI framework and the learning styles, the most significant correlations were observed between (a) the cognitive presence and the understanding of information and (b) the cognitive presence and the full set of learning styles.