Building a validity argument for the community of inquiry survey instrument

The purpose of this study was to provide empirical evidence to support the validity of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model survey. The participants for this study were undergraduate and graduate students (n = 1173) enrolled in fully online (57%) and blended online courses (43%) offered through WebCT during the spring 2008 semester at a mid-sized western university. One half of the student responses were randomly selected for exploratory factor analysis while the remaining half was subjected to confirmatory factor analysis. Results from the exploratory analysis identified a three factor model which was tested through confirmatory factor analysis and found to be an acceptable fit to the predicted population model. Results from this study suggest that the CoI survey holds promise as a useful evaluation tool for providing formative and summative feedback about the effectiveness of online courses and programs.