USING THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY MODEL (COI) TO INVESTIGATE THE QUALITY OF ESL STUDENTS’ NARRATIVE WRITING IN AN ASYNCHRONOUS ONLINE DISCUSSION

The study explored the presences that were evident when six students and a teacher’s online interactions were categorized based on CoI model and how these interactions were able to add quality to the students’ narrative essays in an asynchronous online discussion. This study involved six Malaysian ESL students and a teacher interacting in the asynchronous discussion to complete their narrative writing tasks. The interactions were categorized based on social, teaching and cognitive presences suggested by the CoI model. Data were gathered from online archives and narrative essays scores. The findings reaffirm the presences of social and teaching presences although there was a dissimilar pattern for cognitive presence. Additional research outcome were that of emerging themes related to exam-centeredness, teacher-centeredness and online fatique syndrome. The findings suggest that there is a need for intervention and different instructions from the teacher based on the Krathwohl’s adapted version of Bloom’s Taxonomy.