A Communication-Focused Model for Learning and Education

Discontinuities in markets and technology as well as issues of performance are roiling the field of higher education. Despite the profusion of educational and learning concepts, a comprehensive model for both explaining and testing for educational performance has been hard to come by. The paper starts with a brief retrospect of the better-known conceptualizations of learning and educational processes. Next, built atop the Community of Inquiry framework and employing the typology for the purposes of communication under knowledge-intensive environments, a Communication-Focused Model for Learning and Education is proposed. With clearly laid out causal linkages, the model shows how the sub-components of a communication-based design aggregate to a comprehensive educational design. Such educational design in turn is shown to influence the learning processes and, finally, the quality of learning, which can be assessed better with the proposed comprehensive model. Suggestions for the empirical applications of the model and for its heuristic extrapolations to arrive at new educational designs are provided.