Much research into college student motivation focuses on traditional face-to-face (FtF) classroom settings. Building from previous research in Feedback Intervention Theory (Kluger & DeNisi, 1996) and the Community of Inquiry framework (Anderson, Rourke, Garrison, & Archer, 2001;Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 1999), this study sought to identify predictors of student motivation toward online courses. Results from a hierarchical multiple regression, using data from 190 online undergraduate students, suggest that student predisposition to receiving instructor feedback and student perceptions of teaching presence provide strong prediction of student motivation toward online courses. However, perceptions of teaching presence did not predict motivation in the hypothesized direction. These findings support the notion that the online learning environment offers its own unique set of challenges and opportunities, and warrants continued empirical research beyond comparisons to FtF classroom settings.
University online course enrollment continues to rise at a rate higher than that of traditional, face-to-face university education, and several benefits exist to creating a collaborative online course environment. Therefore, a need exists to critically consider existing research about small group work in online courses. The present article provides a meta-synthesis of 41 articles related to this topic. This meta-synthesis includes a review of literature followed by a discussion of critiques and directions for future research about online course student collaboration. Findings from this meta-synthesis include a lack of consistent definitions within literature about student collaboration online, methodological issues in existing empirical studies, and the lack of interdisciplinary contribution to online course small group literature.
Understanding how people use communication technologies (CTs) in close relationships requires examining interdependencies in or patterns of CT use in those relationships. We combined channel complementarity theory and media multiplexity theory to investigate first-year college students’ ( N = 155) use of CTs (video chat, phone calls, and text messaging) in close, long-distance friendships over a 3- to 10-day period. Overall, CTs were used complementarily. However, complementary use of phone calls and text messaging was higher in closer friendships. In contrast, phone calls and video chat were complementary at low but not high levels of closeness. These findings suggest utility in combining channel complementarity theory and media multiplexity theory to understand the “web” of CTs used in daily communication in long-distance friendships and point to similarities in and differences between CTs that might affect complementarity.
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