Internet Learning Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 2015 | Page 120

Internet Learning Journal – Volume 4, Issue 1 – Spring 2015
He (2004) described terminology as the chosen words used as a communication
vehicle for a field. Immediacy scholars may want to consider using words that signify
student behaviors, such as collaboration and interaction, in study titles and abstracts to alert
researchers who might not otherwise be familiar with the term immediacy. While immediacy
is a teacher initiated behavior, by associating the term immediacy with more commonly used
online teaching terms, it may be possible to expose a broader audience to the immediacy
term. The results of the study illustrate that collaboration and interaction, for example,
appear to be most popular among independent online education textbook authors.
Yorks (2005) maintained that industry, like the academy, has a responsibility to
transfer knowledge. The results of this study indicate that the predominant immediacy
terminology was in the minor category, that of timely responses. The disconnect between
online education textbook authors and immediacy scholars was more apparent in the broad
category of developing teacher to student closeness and acknowledging student feelings.
This research indicates that regardless of the textbook authors’ positions internal or external
to the industry, the online education textbook industry has not acknowledged scholarly
studies related to immediacy. Bleiklie and Powell (2005) believed that individuals have a
strong role in knowledge creation in industry as well as education. Publishing leaders,
authors, and scholars can improve performance in transferring research findings for
inclusion in online educational textbooks.
A call by several scholars for on-going research into the efficacy of online education
continues (Brown, 2006; Day et al., 2006; Lao, 2002; Moskal et al., 2006; O’Dwyer et al.,
2007). Online educational textbook authors can disseminate an understanding of immediacy
as scholars intended. Teacher immediacy in the online classroom has been operationalized
as non-verbal teacher communications that foster psychological closeness and acknowledge
student feelings and emotions in a timely response. Immediacy can result in satisfied
students (Arbaugh, 2001) and increased attendance (Rocca, 2004).
Limitations
The study did not include online education textbooks edited and written by multiple
authors; therefore, whether these multi-authored books incorporate immediacy terminology
or include citations to peer-reviewed immediacy scholarly studies is unknown. Because no
online educational textbooks contained the term immediacy in the title, those textbooks
containing engagement or collaboration formed part of the study even though the terms are
not indicative of immediacy. The focus of the study was not general collaboration or
interaction in the online classroom; instead, the focus was determining how authors used
immediacy terminology in the textbooks. Immediacy terms counted within the first four
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