Internet Learning Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 2015 | Page 99

Internet Learning Journal – Volume 4, Issue 1 – Spring 2015
and social presence or lack thereof may have on their students’ satisfaction, motivation, and
learning” (Swan & Richardson, 2003, p. 81). Thus, how an instructor personalizes
communications to a student ties to student satisfaction and as Rocca (2004) noted,
increased student attendance. The definition of online teacher immediacy includes two
distinct categories: The first category concerns personalized student responses, and the
second category concerns the timeliness of responses. Before online classes existed, in a
formidable definition, Duran and Zakahi (1987) claimed that being personable—attentive,
friendly, open, relaxed—and lively comprised immediacy.
Two delineated formats observed within the popular textbooks served as the
definition of teacher immediacy. The first format, broad emphasis, indicates the need for
instructors to acknowledge personally or reinforce the feelings and emotions of the online
students through communications such as email, message board postings, or assignment
feedback. The second format, minor emphasis, references timely instructor responses.
The Coding Book of Definitions included two categories of immediacy terminology,
broad and minor and a display of these terms as list can be found in the Immediacy
Terminology and Reference/Citation Coding Sheets. Broad terms relate to feelings and
closeness. Teacher immediacy in the online classroom has been operationalized for the study
as non-verbal teacher communications that foster psychological closeness and acknowledge
student feelings and emotions in a timely response. Minor terms relate to timely instructor
responses, such as quick, fast, and speedy.
Assumptions
The first assumption was that the word immediacy would not likely appear in the
textbooks. Instead of the word immediacy, its operational terms, such as feelings and
closeness, as defined in the Coding Book of Definitions (see Appendix B), may be
acknowledged based on happenstance related to the level of online teaching experience each
independent author held as an instructor. The second assumption was that the term
immediacy may not be so readily on the mind of the independent author who had earnestly
searched scholarly research databases but who only applied familiar terms, such as
collaboration, interaction, and engagement, within such searches. Appendix A represents
prominent immediacy studies those with the word immediacy in the title or abstract.
The scholarly field of research applied to teacher immediacy in the online classroom
was less than one decade old. Conversely, Griggs et al. (2004) had more than 100 years of
scholarly citations and references available to study the introductory psychology textbooks.
Immediacy has been well documented in scholarly journals for approximately two decades
for all modalities of classroom instruction (see Appendix A) for a complete list of prominent
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