American Journal of Educational Research, 2014, Vol. 2, No. 8, 663-668 Available online at http://pubs.sciepub.com/education/2/8/15 © Science and Education Publishing DOI:10.12691/education-2-8-15 Connecting Global Learners Using eLearning and the Community of Inquiry Model Kimberley Garth-James 1,* , Brina Hollis 2 1 Academic Program Director, Master Public Administration & Finance, Columbia Southern University 2 Academic Program Director, Health Care Administration, Columbia Southern University, Orange Beach, USA *Corresponding author: garth-james@columbiasouthern.edu Received July 01, 2014; Revised July 24, 2014; Accepted August 06, 2014 Abstract As the world grows more interdependent, global citizens, universities, and corporations must develop a new set of tools to work together with international neighbors, friends, and leaders. Many higher education institutions have expanded their campuses across countries, and now require newways to effectively use technological developments for mobile, electronic, and social media learning to support the global community of learners/inquiries. Issues related to connecting students and faculty to learning materials include energy-efficient equipment and shrinking information technology (IT) budgets, making it difficult to produce new high-density servers as well as quality computer-based education. The Community of Inquiry (CoI) model based on the social constructivist theory of John Dewey (1938), and evaluated by Randy Garrison, Terry Anderson, and Walter Archer (2000), indicates that virtual learning communities are dynamic. Essential to the CoI are cognitive, teaching and social presence. Therefore, our research suggests that eLearning proprietary colleges/universities through course design, instruction, and technology create a virtual global learning community experience that is not any hindrance to students’ social, cognitive, and teaching interaction. The research findings reveal the interesting nature of adopting and adapting to the CoI as defined by technology-based course design and faculty engagement, to the online proprietary learning environment worldwide, and our insights may radically change educators’ mostly negative views of distance education. The findings provide a glimpse into proprietary virtual global learning, and reveal how it affects the process of student engagement, reflection, and exploration of concepts for application to the real world. Keywords: social presence, community of inquiry, e-learning, global learning, constructivist theory, virtual librarians, students Cite This Article: Kimberley Garth-James, and Brina Hollis, “Connecting Global Learners Using eLearning and the Community of Inquiry Model.” American Journal of Educational Research, vol. 2, no. 8 (2014): 663-668. doi: 10.12691/education-2-8-15. 1. Introduction 1.1. ELearning in Higher Education Recent studies on eLearning (the use of electronic technologies in classrooms) in higher education have focused entirely on the relationship between students and faculty to coursework (Garrison & Archer, 2000) rather than asking whether eLearning technologies foster a social community and effective learning environment. Arguably, eLearning is defined as using educational technologies (computers), and learning management systems (e.g., Blackboard, Moodle websites) to connect students and faculty in a computer-based learning experience (Gallagher, 2003). However, the pedagogic opportunity for delivering classroom education by the Internet (online), on-ground (face-to-face), and blending the two, requires more than the digital features of eLearning (Mayes & de Fritas, 2009). In higher education, eLearning is an essential method for providing global learners required coursework, lectures, and classroom materials from a distance (Oblinger & Hawkins, 2004; O’Neill & McMahon, 2005). The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework examined by several authors regarding online (or virtual learning), which focused on teaching, cognitive and social presence, is challenging modern college/universities and decision makers seeking solutions to the demands of global learners that desired the virtual rather than physical (on ground) academic experience (Garrison & Archer, 2000; Mayes & de Fritas, 2009; US Department of Education Study, 2010). As such, learning models focusing on the student, the teacher, and the curriculum, require aspects of the CoI to build the educational environment necessary for erudition. Higher education institutions build a collaborative environment for learning, and devise strategies to inspire students to continue learning beyond the classroom. In the for-profit higher education environment, the eLearning modalities are the bread and butter of a college/university, and discussions to implement scholastic arrangements that are ideal for student achievements are ongoing and without agreement. Our findings about distance eLearning (online, blended) models revealed insignificant differences in traditional classroom and online environments concerning “learning effectiveness” (Shachar & Neumann, 2010;