The prevalence of open and distributed learning has led to emergence of new pedagogies, strategies and methods to increase its effectiveness and quality. A crucial theoretical framework in any type of open and distributed learning settings is community of inquiry (CoI) originally developed by Garrison, Anderson and Archer in 2000. Creating a community is so important that creates the social fabric of learning and learning includes a matter of belonging and intellectual process. A strong community enhances the interactions and relationships based on mutual respect and trust, increment a willingness to share, encourages collaboration, etc. (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder; 2002) CoI framework explains an effective educational experience with the intersection of three constructs social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence within a learning community. It is a generic model and conceptually grounded in teaching and learning theories in higher education, specifically collaborative and social-constructivist orientations that are theoretical lens of this study. It has been generated firstly for online discussion platforms (Rourke, Anderson, Garrison, & Archer, 2007) however; with the developments of synchronous and asynchronous technologies, started to be used in online, blended and three dimensional virtual learning environments (Bulu, 2012; Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2010). The underpinning of this framework is that effective learning occurs within a community and the interaction of three core elements to facilitate higher learning. In an educational experience, social presence is the ability of learners to project themselves socially and emotionally in a community of inquiry. The function of this element is to support the cognitive and affective objectives of learning. Cognitive presence is the extent to which the participants in any particular configuration of a community of inquiry are able to construct meaning through sustained communication (Garrison et al., 2000, p. 89). Teaching presence includes designing and managing learning sequences, providing subject matter expertise, and facilitating active learning.

A common point from the related literature is that three elements of community of inquiry are interrelated and positively affect each other (Akyol, 2009; Polat, 2013). Teaching presence encompasses the basis to create a learning community of inquiry and paramount to facilitate other two constructs. (Archibald, 2010; Garrison, Cleveland-Innes, Fung, 2010; Shea & Bidjerano, 2009). In addition, teaching presence provide the transition from social presence to cognitive presence and therefore, it should be available in the environment (Tran, 2011). It is most studied element, and therefore, most known element in the CoI framework. As for social presence, the literature revealed its significant effect on cognitive presence (Kozan & Richardson, 2014; Polat, 2013; Rourk et al., 2007) as well as way of its improvement by encouraging cognitive presence via social interaction. However, cognitive presence is the least known element since it is most challenging to study in this framework (Akyol, 2009). The maximum explained variance from earlier studies was 69% (Archibald, 2010; Shea & Bidjerano, 2009), which means there are still unknown parts and there is a need to study more.

From a perspective of theoretical framework including social-cognitive theory, constructivism and creating collaborative learning community, this study elucidated community of inquiry framework in regard to self-regulation, metacognition, and motivation in an online learning setting. With this aim, the following research questions were investigated: 1. What are the students’ perceived levels of CoI, social presence, cognitive presence, teaching presence, self-regulation, metacognition and motivation in the online course context? 2. How do students’ perceived levels of self-regulation, metacognition, and motivation levels in the online course context predict their perception of CoI, social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence? From quantitative research designs, correlational design was applied (Creswell, 2012; Fraenkel, Wallen, & Hyun, 2012). The participants were selected with purposive sampling method and included 1740 students enrolled in online course Information and Communication Technology-I offered by Department of Informatics in a well-known public university in Ankara, Turkey during the fall term in academic year of 2015-16. The course syllabus and course content are prepared in accordance with the European Computer Driving License (ECDL). It teaches the basics of a computer and fundamentals of computer literacy. The course is taught fully online through Adobe Connect, supported with a learning management system Moodle and also a social networking service Facebook for an easier communication and interaction. Of 1740 participants, missing data and extreme cases were eliminated and in the end, 1535 subjects were included. The participants included mostly female students (n=1078, 70.2%), and the remaining were male (n=457, 29.8%). Their year of study are freshman (n=726, 47.3%), sophomore (n=478, 31.1%), junior (n=308, 20.1%), senior (n=18, 1.2%), and the others (n=5, .3%). Their age range are different, and most of them are at the ages of 17-21 (n=1258, 82%). Finally, the participants were from different faculties including 13-faculty and one vocational school. The majority of them (n=561, 36.5%) were from the Faculty of Language, History and Geography. In regard of their department, there is again a variety of the disciplines including a total of 51 different departments. The majority of them were from the Departments of Pharmacy (n=188, 12.2%), Psychology (n=110, 7.2%) and Medical Documentary and Secretary (n=100, 6.5%). They were not accumulated only in few departments and this distribution provides an advantage on the generalizability of the results. The data was collected online through Survey Monkey and analyzed with descriptive and inferential statistics through simultaneous (standard) multiple linear regression analysis via SPSS version 23.

The findings indicated that there was a strong positive correlation between the CoI and self-regulation, which was statistically significant (r=.75, n=1535, p<.01), again a strong positive significant correlation with metacognition (r=.57, n=1535, p<.01), and same with motivation (r=.60, n=1535, p<.01). All three variables have positively correlated with the CoI and the degree of their relations are strong. The strong correlation with the CoI belongs to the self-regulation. The metacognition and motivation have correlated with the CoI about the same degree. The model explains the 62% of total variance and significant F (3, 1531) = 825.56; p < .01. The best predictor is self-regulation while the weakest one is metacognition among three predictors that accounted 62% of total variability of the community of inquiry. In summary, the findings notably unveiled that all three constructs self-regulation, metacognition, and motivation have significantly and positively associated with and contributed in the prediction of community of inquiry and its three-presence. Of those three constructs, self-regulation is highly important for overall community of inquiry and belonging three-presence due to having the highest association and contribution. Therefore, it is crucial to add self-regulation as a new presence called regulatory presence to the community of inquiry framework which in turns a new tentative model in parallel to the findings of this research. Some recent research also highlighted the needs and importance of self-efficacy. This study approved this issue and also enriched its scope that indicating not only self-efficacy, but rather with all dimensions, self-regulation is of vital importance and thus, should be included in the CoI framework which in turns brings a new tentative model.

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