Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education D. Randy Garrison Terry Anderson Walter Archer

Assuming that the studies that this is basing its theories off of are reliable this literature review/ critical inquiry was pretty convincing. I think I managed to wrap my head around the general concepts they put forth pretty well. Theirs not a lot you can refute or argue with unless your familiar with the reference material and I am not. The concepts though were well laid out and elaborately explained in detail, they were logical and as a result pretty persuasive. I the only thing that struck me was the reliance on emoticons for a replacement of visual cues. I notice that the article is from 2000 so its almost 12 years old. I would think that many of the limitations, and drawbacks of CMC in facilitating a community of inquiry may have been addressed by subsequent technological innovations in the field since this publication. For example just looking at centra you can clap, laugh, voice chat, and text chat in a much more synchronous manner than was available in 2000. Voice would probably be the most important disadvantage in terms of comparing FtF and CMC that has been overcome. While you still can't see the smile or other facial visual cues in most educational CMC, tone, inflection, and other voice related communication tools are now available. Video chat I should note, is widely available but doesn't seem to be commonplace in educational CMC yet. The best way to dissect and analyze CMC with a standard set of coding to find elements and indicators of successful communities of inquiry is very interesting to me. I find problem based learning and development of critical thinking skills to be of the utmost importance in education. The more research and development of our understanding of what makes a successful community work, the better we can create them as teacher.