The Community of Inquiry Framework is a more than 20-year-old distance education framework that focuses on community-based teaching and learning methods. In the time since its development, there has been a range of tools and resources developed to aid the establishment and evaluation of a Community of Inquiry. This presentation will provide a historical overview, current status, and future research opportunities for this important distance learning framework.

As part of the presentation, the team will introduce a “living synthesis” environment: a curated research repository and community space for researchers, practitioners, and students to share and discuss key publications, core principles, and new developments within the CoI research community. In this interactive session, participants will be invited to contribute to a lively conversation about the CoI and where we go from here.

The presenters include representatives from the "three generations" of CoI researchers: D. Randy Garrison (University of Calgary, emeritus), Martha Cleveland-Innes (Athabasca University), Norman Vaughan (Mount Royal University), Stefan Stenbom (KTH Royal Institute of Technology), Debra Dell (Athabasca University), and Dan Wilton (Athabasca University).