Increasing children’s access to media has attached greater significance to media literacy education, the content and methods of which have changed with media development. This study aimed to investigate the effects of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) method on media literacy competencies in elementary students. To this end, 95 female sixth-grade elementary students were selected from Moalem Elementary School, Hamedan, Iran, in the academic year 2019–2020 as the sample using multistage random cluster sampling. This study was a quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest design. The participants were randomly assigned to three groups, i.e. CoI, Direct Teaching (DT), and Control (CON). For data collection, three tests including functional evaluation, self-evaluation, and parent evaluation were used, whose reliability and validity had been verified using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient, content validity ratio (CVR), and content validity index (CVI), was employed to collect data and evaluate media competency dimensions. The results from the analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the post hoc Scheffé’s test demonstrated the significantly higher media literacy level of students in the CoI group compared with the DT and CON groups at a 95% confidence interval. A significant difference was also observed in the subscales of Critical Consumption, Functional Prosumption, and Critical Prosumption. Based on these findings, the CoI is suggested to be applied in the design, development, and implementation of media literacy programs to allow students to use media properly, critique their content, and actively participate in online content creation.
