Reframing social presence as driving principle of enhanced online educational experience

There has been heightened interest in identifying contextual factors that impact the design and implementation of high quality virtual learning settings. One of the attempts to extend the Community of Inquiry framework proposed by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) includes formative assessment and dynamic course design to describe or (re)define enhanced educational experiences in virtual settings (Boboc, 2015). Contextualizing different levels of presence in social and cognitive terms should take into account a holistic perspective on growth and development of very diverse student populations in virtual learning environments. Future research will focus on facilitating factors as well as obstacles related to the design of enhanced online educational experiences.