Interaction in synchronous chat tutorials to facilitate learning in introductory statistics

This paper investigates interaction in synchronous chat tutorials trialed in an introductory statistics course offered in distance education mode. The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework of Garrison, Anderson and Archer, while primarily developed to inform online asynchronous discussion groups in non-mathematical contexts, is used to describe the interactions in these online tutorials. Transcript analysis was performed on three chat logs of weekly online sessions and the three presences of the CoI framework - social, cognitive and teaching presence - were identified. The changing dynamic amongst these presences across the semester was explored. Preliminary results indicate that the balance of the presences changes over time and, while it is suggested that this may be associated with the difficulty of the content, further investigation is needed.