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Abstract
This study investigated student perceptions of using instant messaging software for online interactive chapter discussions in a graduate teacher educational technology course. The criterion instrument was a 47-item scale that measured Chickering and Garrison ’s (1987) first four principles for good practice in undergraduate education, yielding reliabilities ranging from. 837 to. 895. Students rated the course significantly higher than their regular classroom courses, with stronger effects on perceptions of student cooperation and active learning, and weaker effects on perceptions of instructor contact and feedback. These findings support the proposition that instant messaging may be used as a technique to increase dialogue and thereby reduce transactional distance, especially among students, in an online course environment.
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Notes on contributors
Lih-Ching Chen Wang
Lih-Ching Chen Wang is an Associate Professor cf Education in the area of Educational Technology. She is a Fulbright Scholar and Director of the Confucius Institute at Cleveland State University (CSU). She works in the Department of Curriculum and Foundations within the College of Education and Human Services at CSU. Her current duties center around helping classroom teachers learn how to better integrate many different technologies into their professional practice. Her main research interests focus on technology integration in teacher education, eLearning, and server applications in teaching and learning.
William R. Morgan
William R. Morgan is Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean of Faculty in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Cleveland State University. Ongoing research projects are (1) a longitudinal study of the educational resilience of preadolescent children of drug-abusing mothers (funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse), and (2) changes in education, occupation, and life attitudes of adolescents in a West African city using survey data collected in 2007, 1979, and 1965. He also directs a faculty linkage program with Bayero University in Kano, Nigeria (funded by the Educational Partnership Program, U.S. Department of State).