A community of inquiry-based framework for civic education at Universitas Terbuka, Indonesia

Abstract

This study focused on the civic education course at Universitas Terbuka (UT). Its purpose was to design a new approach for the online tutorial for the course by analyzing the literature related to online and distance education and investigating participant feedback on the current offering of the course and tutorial, which is a compulsory course in all programs at UT. The study draws from the community of inquiry framework, which promotes a social constructivist approach as well as teaching about democracy by example. This model is intended to create meaningful learning experiences for students in a reformulated civic education course, in which they would learn to think critically through interacting with classmates, experiencing collaborative learning, and supporting fellow students in learning activities and processes. In this model, learning is seen as occurring within the community through the interaction of social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence where, students are able to develop civic competences, namely civic knowledge, civic skills, and civic dispositions, as well as experience a democratic interaction that forms the core of civic interactions in a democratic society.

Keywords:

• civic competence
• civic education
• community of inquiry
• democracy
• online learning
• social constructivism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

An earlier version of this article was presented at the 28th Annual Conference of Asian Association of Open Universities, Hong Kong, SAR, China, 28–31 October 2014.