Making the Most of Interaction: The Role of Instructor Interaction

1. Making the Most of Interaction:The Role of Instructor Interaction Jennifer C. Richardson and Evelyn Ting Empire State College

2. Empire State College • Empire State College was founded on a pedagogy of highly individualized work with adult distance learners • in a variety of delivery modes (print, video supplement, video conference, audio conferencing, telephone). • through a variety of learning modalities such as one to one student/faculty instruction, small group studies, distance learning, and recognition of college-level learning acquired on the job and in other life experiences.

3. Wagner (1994) “An instructional interaction is an event that takes place between a learner in a way intended to change his or her behavior toward an educational goal. An instructional interaction is effective when the environmental response changes the learner’s behavior toward that goal. Instructional interactions have two purposes: to change learners and to move them toward an action state of goal attainment.”

4. Moore (1989) created a three-tier taxonomy of interactions: • learner-content interaction, • learner-instructor interaction, and • learner-learner interaction • For the purposes of this paper we are most concerned with the leaner-instructor level of interactions and how they effect the learner.

5. Moore believes that it is the role of the instructor or expert to not only plan or teach a curriculum but also to: stimulate or at least maintain the learner’s interest in what is to be taught, to motivate the leaner to learn, to enhance and maintain the • learner’s interest, including self-direction and self-motivation.

6. Instructors organize evaluation to ascertain if learners are making progress, and to help decide if whether to change strategies. • Finally, instructors provide counsel, support and encouragement to each learner, though the extent and nature of this support varies according to educational level of the learners, the teacher’s personality and philosophy, and other factors.

7. The positive relationship between students’ satisfaction with instruction and their subsequent success in a course (Pascarella, et al., 1996) is further linked with the integral role that interaction plays in the level of learning attained by students (Vygotsky, 1986; Maxwell, Richter and McCain, 1995; Reeves and Reeves, 1996).

8. More importantly, “few chances to interact with the instructor limits students’ ability to clarify and negotiate instructional goals, explore alternative methods, or construct meaning within in a social context based on personal knowledge (Garrison, 1993).”

9. To quote Oliver and McLoughlin (1997), “few dispute the advantages offered by interactive elements that support dialogue in teaching and learning. Communicative interactions can be used to engage learners, to cause them to reflect on and to articulate ideas. Interactions encourage and facilitate cognition and play an important part in promoting learners’ intellectual operations and thinking processes (p. 37).”

10. In addition, when high levels of interaction are present, students report that they experience more than in situations that involve low levels of instructor-student interactions (Richard, Gorham, and McCroskey, 1987:, Gorham, 1988).

11. The Study Purpose The purpose of this paper is to look at how students’ perceptions of instructor interaction/participation in an online course relates to students’ perceptions of overall course satisfaction.

12. Methodology • Participants • 691 surveys were sent to students enrolled in courses through the Center for Distance Learning at Empire State College • 170 of 691 students returned the surveys giving us a return rate of 25%. Of those students, 22% reported being enrolled in online courses and 78% reported being enrolled in print-based courses for the Spring 1999 semester. • Moreover, 50% of students indicated they had never taken an online course, 13% indicated taking one online course, 10% indicated they had taken two or more online courses, and 27% did not respond to the question.

13. Instrumentation • Students were asked to give background information regarding their education as well as the number of courses taken in the print-based format and the online format. • Students were given 13 Likert-type questions with responses ranging from 1 to 5 (strongly agree to strongly disagree). • Finally, they were asked to answer 6 open-ended questions to gather further detail regarding the Likert-type questions.

14. All of the questions, both Likert and open-ended, were then coded so that analyses could be run. • Frequencies were run on Likert questions number 3, 4, 5, 12, 13 • In addition, a two-way multivariate of analysis was used to analyze the quantitative survey data. The fixed categorical independent variable was “overall course satisfaction” (question #12) and the continuous dependent construct was students’ perception of instructor interaction and/or participation in the course.

15. The dependent construct (students’ perception of instructor interaction and/or participation in the course) consisted of four components: • students’ perceived level of importance of interaction with instructor in relation to performance in course (Question #3) • students’ perceived level of importance of feedback from instructor in relation to performance in course (Question #4), • students’ perception of need for more interaction with instructor (Question 5), and • students’ indication of overall satisfaction with instructor’s performance for course (Question 13).

16. Results • 73% of online students perceived the interaction with their instructor as either very important or important in relation to their performance in the course while only 57% of print-based students indicated the same. • In relation to instructor feedback, approximately 79% of print-based students indicate that they perceived the feedback from their instructor to be either very important or important in relation to their performance in the course and online students agreed, but to a lesser extent at 70%.

17. Moreover, the results of Table 3 indicate that 33% of online students felt that their instructors should have provided more interaction with students throughout their course while 23% of print-based students were in agreement. • However, it should also be noted that 35% of online students and 40% of print-based students were satisfied with the level of interaction provided.

18. 71% of online students and 79% of print-based students were satisfied overall with their instructor’s performance in this course • While 76% of online students and 83% of print-based students were satisfied with their course overall. It should also be noted that while 16% of online students were dissatisfied with their instructor’s performance only 8% reported being dissatisfied with their course. • Both the online students and the print-based students perceived instructor interaction to be of a high level or quality (58% and 66% respectively).

19. Examination of the results indicates that the use of a multivariate approach to study the construct of students’ perceptions of instructor interaction and/or participation in the course is justified (Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity = 239.605; df = 9; p<.05); therefore, a multivariate analysis of variance was used to test the hypothesis of a relationship between course format and students’ perceptions of instructor interaction and/or participation in the course.

20. Examination of the results of the multivariate analysis of variance indicates a significant difference on the construct of students’ perceptions of instructor interaction and/or participation in the course by course format (F=1.634; df = 4, 161; p<.05). • An examination of the results of the univariate analysis of variance indicated that the differences are related to students’ perceived level of importance of interaction with instructor in relation to performance in courseandstudents’ perception of need for more interaction with instructor.

21. The multivariate strength of association indicated that 4% of the variability of students’ perceptions of instructor interaction and/or participation in the course could be accounted for by format.

22. Discussion To begin with, not only did online students feel that interaction was more important than print-based students, but they also indicated a need for more interaction. What does this tell us? • This could be telling us that the online format requires more interaction than the print-based format to achieve a similar degree of satisfaction. • Or, it could be telling us that students may not be as comfortable in online courses because the format is still so new that they feel the need for more interaction as an additional support or reassurance for students unfamiliarity with the online format.

23. While instructor interaction was more important to online students, feedback from instructor was more important to print-based students. What does this mean exactly? Isn’t feedback a form of interaction? Shouldn’t the findings have been in agreement for Questions 3 and 4? Perhaps there is another reason for this discrepancy. • The first possibility is that students perceive a different type of interaction as being necessary across differing formats. • A second, and equally likely possibility is that students may perceive online environments as having additional or different instructor components than print-based students expect. Further research into this area is necessary.

24. The results of the MANOVA and the univariate tests lead to an additional possibility: perhaps we should consider the possibility that student characteristics or learner profiles may differ in relation to the type of course format. In other words, perhaps students registering for online courses differ significantly from students who register for traditional classroom formats or other distance education formats. If this is the case, then we need to look at the learning theories, instructional design models, and distance education models and modify them accordingly.

25. Finally, looking at the strength of association for the MANOVA, we initially hoped for a larger strength of association than 4% in relation to variability by format. However, we came to realize several important facts.

26. First, part of the reason for this small strength of association is due to the number of variables associated with this area of research; as such, even 4% of variability that can be accounted for is important.

27. In addition, we also came to realize that the small strength of association indicated that we had accomplished one of our goals—of delivering the same quality education in both course formats. • In other words, if the format of the course isn’t creating a very large amount of the variability, then the course formats must be comparable at least in terms of student satisfaction and students’ perception of instructor interaction and/or participation in the course .