Internet Learning Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 2015 | Page 109
Internet Learning Journal – Volume 4, Issue 1 – Spring 2015
possible. Therefore, all the most popular independently authored books were included.
Based on this sampling approach, the only other possible means to identify the best selling
online teaching textbooks would be to survey the publishers. According to Riffe, Lacy, and
Fico (2005), “The value of research using a convenient sample should not be diminished”
(p. 102). If the sample, such as the best selling Amazon.com population of online teaching
textbooks identified, was small and the content was not homogeneous, bias may be
introduced. Riffe et al. maintained that journalistic endeavors typically are not homogeneous
by nature.
A cursory review of chapter arrangements was necessary after the 19 textbooks were
finalized. No common pattern of terminology or the order of best practices discussed had
emerged after examination of chapter headings in 4 of the textbooks. Sampling of the
paragraphs was stratified by chapter. Consequently, chapter content complexity was
expected to vary significantly (see Appendix H for specific paragraph counts). References
from the entire sample were coded and compared to the scholarly peer-reviewed immediacy
journal articles.
Griggs et al. (2004) included 24 textbooks in the study of introductory psychology
textbooks but produced an in-depth study because of 100 years of psychological scholarly
references available for inclusion in the texts. The practice of online education has
approximately 1 decade of research from which to draw scholarly studies. Hence, the
authors of the online teaching textbooks had more than 40 immediacy studies (see Appendix
A) available for inclusion in the texts.
Data Collection
Raw data comprising of scholarly immediacy terminology drawn from the
terminology scale discussed earlier were culled from the first four chapters of the 19
independently authored online teaching textbooks. Counting instances of prominent
scholarly immediacy in-text and reference page citations were among the most important
descriptive statistical variables tracked for the study. Finally, counting the instances of
scholarly immediacy terminology drawn from the terminology scale in chapter titles and
sub-titles also comprised the raw data.
Each coder used the perfect bound textbooks defined in the sample to gather data
about immediacy. For the terminology scale, teacher immediacy terminology was divided
into two categories. The first was a broad category that included a number of terms related
to immediacy, such as students’ feelings, closeness, and emotions (Mehrabian, 1971; 2007).
The second category was a minor category that included associating immediacy with timely
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