Cognitive presence

Cognitive presence is the degree to which a learner is making an individual effort toward thinking and attention in a learning activity, particularly in an online learning activity where they are not physically present. Cognitive presence is a part of the community of inquiry framework for understanding the ways learners are present in online learning contexts.

Definition

In the community of inquiry (COI) framework, cognitive presence is defined as "the extent to which the participants in any particular configuration of a community of inquiry are able to construct meaning through sustained communication.^[1]"

From an instructional design perspective, cognitive presence can be understood as the level and types of personal thinking effort that a learner has within the learning activity. The types of thinking include their attention, critical thinking, participation, reflection on activities, efforts to understand, and engagement with peers, the teacher, and technology.

Additional Information

Cognitive presence is one of three types of presence in the community of inquiry (COI) framework for how people can be "present" in an online context. Similar to face-to-face learning, a person needs to be present and engaged for the learning activity to have any effect. Cognitive presence is the dimension of an individual's psychological and cognitive efforts that are given to the learning activity. Based generally on constructivist theories of learning, COI suggests that learners must actively engage their own focus and cognition on the learning activity to construct new meanings from interactions in the learning environment and refine their understandings through social interactions and the development of shared meanings among participants.

When the learner engages cognitively, they are personally present within the online learning space and are dedicating mental effort toward participation and learning. This is not to say that other people or a teacher are likewise present - these are accounted for in other types of presence within the COI framework (i.e., social presence and teaching presence).

Common actions on part of the learner that indicate cognitive presence include:

Attention and participation
Critical thinking, problem-solving
Connecting and applying knowledge, ideas, and content'
Sharing and refining understandings
Metacognition
Effort to engage in and critically analyze dialogue
Generating and testing ideas
Being open to and encouraging others to engage in social interaction

Under this framework, it is argued that a learner needs to in part be cognitively present for the learning product to have any effect. However, because this is mostly occurring within a learner's brain, it can be difficult to evaluate for the levels and types of cognitive presence that might be occurring among learners. Self reporting assessments that ask learners what and how they are thinking might provide some evidence for cognitive presence and its effects.

Cognitive presence has been researched extensively in online learning contexts for many years. A search in the research literature for keywords similar to "cognitive presence" and "measuring cognitive presence" may yield numerous methods and instruments that have been demonstrated to be useful in measuring and analyzing the impact of cognitive presence.

Tips and Tricks

Presence can be difficult to measure, especially in digital learning environments. A person can be physically present in a classroom, but mentally absent and thinking about something else. Similarly in online environments, a person could be participating by clicking through pages and playing videos, but any number of things could be occurring where they are not providing any attention or cognitive effort to the activity. It is important to consider how you might promote and measure cognitive presence in your activities, as just like when a person is absent from class, any learning activity in which a person is not present will almost always have no effect!
Cognitive presence is about a person's mind being present in the activity and dedicating their attention and effort to participation and understanding. Thinking about how a face-to-face classroom looks, consider how you know that a learner is present? Is it because they are physically sitting in the room? Or are there other ways that they could be present (or conversely, absent)?
Think about ways that you think that people might be cognitively present with your learning activity. Start with the list of common actions in the article above, but also read more deeply with external sources on cognitive presence to get additional ideas of what you want your learners to be doing to be mentally present with your educational product.
You can also consider psychological concepts like metacognition, emotion and attitudes of learners, motivation, and participation to consider other aspects of cognitive presence that could indicate whether your learners are present in the activity.

Related Concepts

Examples

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External Resources