Internet Learning Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 2015 | Page 107

Internet Learning Journal – Volume 4, Issue 1 – Spring 2015
Sales ranking affected which books were available for retrieval, the keyword search
determines, on the particular day, the search outcome. The Amazon.com search engine
provided the most popular books for the key words in the search, typically returning three
pages of results, detailing 48 textbooks. However, not all of the textbooks contained online
or distance learning in the titles, not all were independently authored, and not all achieved
the highest rankings, which led to their subsequent removal.
If a title did not include other words, such as collaborating, interacting, engaging,
teaching, learning, instruction, learners, or facilitation, the textbook was removed from the
population. Moreover, in cases where learning appeared in a title, but the title further
indicated that the textbook addressed only assessment or evaluation of online students, such
titles were removed. Books arranged as compilations of multiple papers or multiple authors
were excluded because the books were not independently authored. Finally, where a
similarly authored textbook appeared as another edition, only the latest edition was included,
and duplications of textbooks found on Amazon.com were removed. The goal was to make
both sample sets equivalent in number. However, based on popularity, the older sample
yielded more qualified texts. Selection of the Amazon.com textbook sample occurred during
the summer of 2006. After the proposal was accepted in April 2007, the textbooks were
purchased from Amazon.com or obtained through interlibrary loans.
While every effort was made to ensure that the textbooks reflected independent
authors, 3 textbooks were later found to be edited compilations of authors, not independent
authorship. These textbooks could not form part of the study. To maintain as large a sample
size as possible, based on sample criteria, either the next most popular book from a 2007
Amazon.com search was acquired, or, in one case, a textbook from 2007 was used because it
met the criteria and was the first to appear in relation to the search string.
During the data-gathering stage, three of the textbooks were found to be
compilations of multiple authors written by a single editor. These books were disqualified
from the sample. In order to broaden the sample to the largest size possible, the decision to
replace these textbooks with the next most popular independently authored textbooks was
constructed from an Amazon.com search in May 2007 using the search term criteria
discussed earlier. The first most popular 2007 textbook meeting the selection criteria
resulted in the sample including texts published between 1999 and 2007.
Table 1 illustrates a complete listing of the final sample of textbooks compiled under
the 1999 to 2002 set and the more recent 2003 to 2007 set.
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