The Effectiveness of Community of Inquiry: The Case of an Online Italian Language Course

From the dawn of constructivism onwards, research in the field of foreign language learning has underlined the importance of activating increasingly articulated methods of interaction according to principles and dynamics that guarantee the effectiveness of collaborative learning. In online environments, in particular, building a learning community can offer the opportunity to integrate new perspectives, knowledge and skills. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework model can promote collaborative learning and make the learning experience more effective as a whole providing our experience with an Italian language couse for beginners delivered in integrated online environments. The instructional design took into account the principles of CoI, and the associated questionnaire developed by Arbaugh et al. (2008) was used to analyze the students perceptions of the functioning of the CoI model for their learning related to the teaching, social and cognitive presence in the course. Considering the specificity of our context, the results of the study showed that CoI can be concretely exploited in an online language course to add significant value to the learning experience of the students and to the professional development of the instructors.