In this paper, we begin our process of incorporating an AI bot in an online chat tutoring setting as a support for the tutor. We explore how an AI bot could give suggestions for tutor messages, although the human tutor will control how to communicate with the student. Tutoring, an important dimension of networked learning, has long been seen as a beneficial approach to students’ learning. An AI bot has the potential to aid tutors in the tutoring process and contribute to the scalability. The present pilot study was conducted in the tutoring setting of the Math Coach program. In the program, teacher students aid students from upper primary school to upper secondary school in mathematics through an online text-based chat system. Llama2 was used as a large language model (LLM), fine-tuned for Swedish comprehension utilizing the Math Coach system's chat logs. Four coaches, teacher students at a technical Swedish university and active in the Math Coach program, were invited to interact with the AI bot and participate in a group discussion. The coaches interacted individually with the AI bot while the chat conversation was displayed on a monitor so all participants could discuss the interaction while it took place. A semi-structured interview approach was taken and the participants were also encouraged to 'think aloud' about their experience. In the discussions, the coaches expressed surprise by the AI's social aspect. They perceived the AI bot as friendly with a positive attitude and were especially surprised by its ability to correctly place appropriate emojis. The coaches agreed that the AI was able to ask both appropriate and helpful questions and share some good guidance for how to proceed in the problem-solving process. However, they felt that the AI bot was not able to offer sufficient mathematical guidance, oftentimes the AI bot was confidently wrong. It also wrote too long messages, which humans would typically separate into several chat messages, and did not wait for a response but instead moved too quickly towards the solution. Moving forward we plan to address the effects of improved prompts on the AI bot and continue finetuning the LLM. We will continue to conduct pilot studies and eventually conduct more large-scale empirical studies.

In this article, we focus on the cognitive presence element of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework. Cognitive presence consists of four categories: Triggering Event, Exploration, Integration, and Resolution. These categories have been described as phases following an idealized logical sequence, although the phases should not be seen as immutable. Few studies have empirically examined how the four categories develop over time during the inquiry process. This article uses learning analytics methods to study transitions between the categories in K-12 online mathematics tutoring. It was statistically most probable that the tutoring sessions started with Triggering Event (95%) and then transitioned to Exploration (51%). The transitions from Exploration to Integration (18%) and Integration to Resolution (21%) achieved statistical significance but were less likely. In fact, it was more likely that the tutoring sessions transitioned from Integration to Exploration (39%) and Resolution to Exploration (36%). In conclusion, the findings suggest that the idealized logical sequence is evident in the data but that other transitions occur as well; especially Exploration recurs throughout the sessions. It seems challenging for students to reach the Integration and Resolution categories. As the CoI framework is commonly adopted in practice, it is important that tutors and educators understand that the categories of cognitive presence will often not play out in idealized ways, underlining their role in supporting how the inquiry process unfolds. In order to gain an improved understanding of the inquiry process, future research is suggested to investigate how the presences and categories of the CoI framework develop over time in different educational settings.

The use of online technologies has made education more accessible. In online education, there are increased expectations for students to be self-directed and take responsibility for their learning. Research has also shown that students can benefit from learning from each other. The purpose of this thesis is to explore how students support their own and other students’ process of inquiry in online text-based tutoring sessions. To enable the analysis of the conversations, a coding scheme for transcript analysis of online tutoring was introduced based on the Relationship of Inquiry framework, which is an adaptation of the Community of Inquiry framework.

This thesis consists of four papers. The first paper focuses on the development of the RoI coding scheme, which is used in two of the following papers. In the second paper, the coding scheme is further revised regarding the aspect of students’ teaching presence and how it connects to students’ support of their own and other students’ inquiry process. In the third paper, students’ support of their own and other students’ process of inquiry in online text-based tutoring sessions is studied further, and their messages are analyzed with the revised coding scheme. The fourth paper adopts an inductive approach and analyzes how students take responsibility for their own and their peers’ problem-solving through thematic analysis. 

The findings show that in online tutoring sessions, students may spontaneously take on the role of a tutor. Through their expressions of teaching presence by, for example, explaining their issues and their previous steps, or answering other students’ questions and giving suggestions, students support their own as well as other students’ inquiry process. The findings indicate that students acquire metacognitive development, through self- and co-regulation, with their expressions of teaching and cognitive presence. Furthermore, the findings show that the coding scheme with fixed categories may not show the full picture of interactions in an online learning environment. Additional analysis reveals that students’ expressions focus on different levels of learning while supporting the problem-solving process. Lastly, this thesis offers guidance on how to create online tutoring sessions where students take responsibility for their learning and are encouraged to help one another. 

Användning av digital teknik har bidragit till att utbildning blivit alltmer tillgängligt. Digital utbildning har ökat förväntan på elever och studenter att vara självreglerande och ta ett större ansvar för sitt lärande. Forskning har också visat att elever och studenter kan gynnas av att lära tillsammans med andra. Syftet med den här avhandlingen är att utforska hur elever och studenter stödjer sitt eget och andras lärande vid textbaserad handledning via internet. För att analysera konversationerna utvecklades ett kodningsschema för analys av handledning via internet baserat på ramverket ”Relationship of Inquiry”, som är en anpassning av det teoretiska ramverket ”Community of Inquiry”.

 Avhandlingen inkluderar fyra artiklar. Den första artikeln fokuserar på utvecklandet av kodningsschemat för ”Relationship of Inquiry”, som senare används i två av de kommande artiklarna. I den andra artikeln vidareutvecklas kodningsschemat för att inkludera elevers uttryck av ”Teaching presence”, samt hur dessa uttryck är relaterade till hur elever stödjer sig själva och andra elever vid problemlösning. Den tredje artikeln fokuserar än mer på hur studenter stödjer sitt eget och andra studenters problemlösning vid textbaserad handledning via internet, där deras meddelanden analyserades med det uppdaterade kodningsschemat. Den fjärde artikeln använder i stället en induktiv ansats. Tematisk analys används för att analysera hur studenter tar ansvar för sin egen och andra studenters problemlösning.

Resultaten visar att elever och studenter spontant tar sig an rollen som handledare. I deras meddelanden där de beskriver vilket problem de har och vad de redan testat eller svarar på andra frågor och bidrar med förslag, uppvisar elever och studenter att de stödjer både sitt egna och andras lärande. Detta demonstrerar att elever och studenter genom att ta ansvar för lärandet i handlarsessionerna kan uppnå metakognitiv utveckling genom själv- och samreglering. Vidare pekar resultaten på att ett kodningsschema med fasta kategorier inte alltid fångar alla delar av den interaktion som sker vid textbaserad handledning via internet. Den tematiska analysen visar att studenter fokuserar på olika aspekter och nivåer av förståelse och lärande medan de stödjer problemlösningen. Avslutningsvis ger denna avhandling råd om hur handledning via internet kan genomföras för att skapa möjlighet för studenter att ta ansvar för sitt eget lärande och uppmuntra studenter att hjälpa varandra.

This paper examines students’ Teaching presence in online one-to-one tutoring sessions guided by the Community of Inquiry framework. The Community of Inquiry is a framework for structuring and describing the process of a meaningful online educational experience through three interdependent elements, Teaching, Social, and Cognitive presence. The framework is widely recognized and utilized in online education, but the aspect of students’ involvement with Teaching presence has received limited attention. This study aims to address this gap by examining how students express Teaching presence in online tutoring sessions.  Using transcript coding, 66 tutoring conversations were analyzed, totaling 6,532 individual messages. The results are that 1,050 messages included students’ Teaching presence, demonstrating their active involvement in designing, facilitating, and directing the tutoring sessions. Students took responsibility for structuring the sessions, seeking feedback, reflecting on solutions, and clarifying misunderstandings. The findings also highlight the intertwined nature of Teaching presence and Cognitive presence, emphasizing the importance of students’ active engagement in the learning process.

Online tutoring has been found to have a positive impact on student learning in STEM education. The aim of this study was to explore how and to what extent students supported their own and other students' processes of inquiry during online tutoring. More specifically, question and answer sessions (Q&As) were studied, and online tutoring transcripts were analyzed using the Relationship of Inquiry coding scheme adapted from the Community of Inquiry framework. The students interacted voluntarily with each other and with the teachers. The results show that the students supported both their own process of inquiry as well as other students' process of inquiry. Furthermore, the results indicate that students acquired metacognitive development through self- and coregulation when they expressed teaching presence. Overall, we conclude that Q&As have the potential to support student learning when working on assignments in STEM education.

Although we know that asking questions is an essential aspect of onlinetutoring, there is limited research on this topic. The aim of this paperwas to identify commonly used direct question types and explore theeffects of using these question types on conversation intensity, approachto tutoring, perceived satisfaction and perceived learning. The researchsetting was individual online synchronous tutoring in mathematics. Theempirical data was based on 13,317 logged conversations and aquestionnaire. The tutors used a mix of open, more student-centredquestions, and closed, more teacher-centred questions. In contrast toprevious research, this study provides a more positive account indicatingthat it is indeed possible to train tutors to focus on asking questions,rather than delivering content. Frequent use of many of the questiontypes contributed to increased conversation intensity. However, therewere few question types that were associated with statisticallysignificant effects on perceived satisfaction or learning. There are nosilver bullet question types that by themselves led to positive effects onperceived satisfaction and learning. The question types could be used byteachers and teacher students when reflecting on what types ofquestions they are asking, and what kind of questions they could be asking.

This work-in progress research paper addresses how the discussion forums in online courses are made useful to promote students' learning. This qualitative study investigates the interactions between learners, as well as between learners and teachers in MOOCs. Community of Inquiry was used as an analytical framework to unveil how the discussions made in the online environment may connect to the course participants' learning processes. Preliminary findings indicate that the interactions taking place in the discussion forums primarily concerns issues regarding course structure. Very few posts concern challenging reasoning or, conversations that may support learners to deepen their understanding of the subject matter at hand.

In this research to practice paper we report on a framework for learning design useful to identify expertise that is needed when creating courses in digital environments, such as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). The framework is based on research emphasizing active and meaningful learning, variation in activities and, feedback. Five different domains of course design for online learning is included in the framework; 1) overall course design, 2) platform possibilities, 3) learning activities, 4) videos, and the design of 5) graded assignments. Each of these domains is associated with certain knowledge and expertise. Applying the framework suggested here can help learning designers and teachers in making purposeful choices and prioritize resources to further enhance student learning.

In online learning research, the theoretical Community of Inquiry framework has been used extensively to analyze processes of inquiry among learners and instructors within a community. This paper examines a special case of community of inquiry consisting of only one learner and one instructor. Together they engage in an online coaching discourse to form a relationship of inquiry. Within these relationships, coachees pass through processes of practical inquiry process while a coach supports the process. In this study, a framework and coding scheme were developed for use in a transcript coding procedure including 3,109 messages from an online coaching case in math for k‑12 students. It is found that the elements of cognitive, teaching, and social presence, as well as the newly proposed emotional presence, which outlines a community of inquiry, comprise an effective structure for the analysis of one-to-one online coaching environments. The findings of this exploratory study suggest that a Relationship of Inquiry framework has the potential to support development of one-to-one online learning.