Internet Learning Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 2015 | Page 117

Internet Learning Journal – Volume 4, Issue 1 – Spring 2015
Table 4 Number of Immediacy Terms Found in Chapter Titles
Most prominent terms 1999 to 2002 2003 to 2007 1999 to 2007
Thoughts 0 1 1
Interaction 0 2 2
Engagement 0 3 3
Collaboration 1 9 10
Timely 2 0 2
Total chapters with
no accompanying
sub-headings 32 15 47
Total Number of
chapter titles without
immediacy terms 85 78 163
The null hypothesis related to the second research question was accepted even
though a foregone conclusion could be noted because more peer-reviewed online immediacy
studies had been published during the latter set of online education textbooks published from
2003 to 2007 compared to the earlier set published from 1999 to 2002. The results indicated
that the earlier sample set included more paragraphs devoted to immediacy terminology than
the later set.
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The purpose of this quantitative content analysis study was to examine whether or
not independently authored online education textbooks used scholarly derived immediacy
terminology and whether these textbooks shared common immediacy terminology in chapter
headings and sub-headings. For this study, teacher immediacy was operationalized into a
terminology scale using a total of 23 words most representative of the scholarly immediacy
concept such as feelings and closeness to those words commonly associated with online
class involvement such as collaboration and interaction. The scale was segmented into a
broad category of terms and a minor category. The broad category included those discussed
above and the minor category was related to timely teacher responses, a secondary
operational definition of immediacy.
A total of 19 independently authored online educational textbooks were selected for
the study by searching Amazon.com. Nine books were published between 2003 and 2007
and 10 books were published from 1999 through 2002. Traditional textbooks were used to
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