Essential Considerations in Distance Education in KSA: Teacher Immediacy in a Virtual Teaching and Learning Environment

Abstract

Abstract-Teacher immediacy (verbal and non-verbal)remains an important factor towards prompting efficient pedagogical approaches. Whilst teacher immediacy in a classroom setting is important, there is growing awareness about the importance of the construct in a virtual setting as education shifts from explicit conventional face-to-face teaching and learning to a blended environment which includes distance education. This paper attempts to generate some understandings about the correlation between teacher immediacy, both verbal and non-verbal, and students' active participation and satisfaction in a distance education learning environment. This paper considers, in a preliminary research framework, a Saudi university which offers a range of distance education courses as an initial cohort from which to generate such understandings. Students' opinions, perceptions, and reported satisfaction were captured through utilising a structured questionnaire completed by 413 participants, enrolled in a variety of distance education courses offered by the aforementioned university. This study found that there was significant correlation between the overall adopted teacher immediacy (verbal and non-verbal) and students' overall online participation and satisfaction in the investigated distance education courses. In terms of gender differences, male participants have higher willingness to participate than female participants within the perceived immediacy behaviours. On the other hand, female participants were more satisfied in terms of communication than male participants within the perceived "e-immediacy" behaviours. These results serve as a prompt for further research on teacher immediacy in the rapidly developing and increasing virtual education domain in a global and connected world.Index Terms-Distance education, teacher immediacy, e-immediacy, verbal immediacy, non-verbal immediacy, students' satisfaction, students' online participation, students' communication satisfaction. I. INTRODUCTIONTeacher immediacy has been a topic of research and interest in conventional (face-to-face) classroom settings. Teacher immediacy-both verbal and non-verbal-focuses mainly on creating a close collaborative communicative environment, where immediacy as a term is defined as ‗the relationship between the speaker and the objects he or she communicates about' [1]. A number of scholars perceived teacher immediacy as the reduction of psychological or [5]. Recent research reported that university lecturers who employ immediacy -including lecturers' warmth and approachability-in their teaching and learning practice experience an increased level of students' participation and enjoy a greater ‗breadth' of such participation [5] In a digital and internationalised 21 st century, universities strive to reposition themselves into offering distance education [6]. In a virtual learning environment, physical separation is one of the characteristics of distance education. Regardless of the advantages physical separation might bring about (flexibility, sav...

Teaching strategies to promote immediacy in online graduate courses

“…Ghamdi, Samarji and Watt (2016) mentioned in their study some verbal teacher immediacy behaviors in online teaching and learning environments as initiating discussion (story), asking questions (Does anyone have answer the question? ), using humor (funny story or funny photos), using self-disclosure (In the last weekend, I watched this movie at the cinema), addressing students by name (Please Adam can you.…”

“…These studies hinted at the expressiveness of the concept as a potentially meaningful factor to improve instructional effectiveness. According to Ghamdi, Samarji and Watt (2016) there are non-verbal teacher immediacy behaviors in an online education as smiling (happy face emoticon), monotone voice (italics or caps: WELL or GOOD), vocal expressions (TODAY), gestures (using emoticons), vocalization (interjections in online immediacy), animated moves (emoticons with movement).…”

Sustainability of e-Learning Environment: Can Social Presence Be Enhanced by Multimedia?

“…Ghamdi, Samarji and Watt investigated teacher immediacy in a virtual learning environment. The results from their study revealed a significant positive correlation between teacher immediacy and students" participation and satisfaction [28].…”

“…In the past few decades, numerous studies have been carried out to investigate the relationships between social presence and various aspects of online learning [4], [13], [21]- [28]. The study conducted by Polhemus, Shih, Richardson and Swan [21] showed that a high degree of social presence would initiate and sustain a greater quantity of interactions and promote deeper interactions.…”

Influence of Lecturer Immediacy on Students’ Learning Outcomes: Evidence from a Distance Education Program at a University in Saudi Arabia

“…According to Richmond [11], "Immediacy is a perception of physical or psychological closeness". Immediacy behaviours encompass a range of verbal and non-verbal behaviours that can be used in online media to symbolically communicate non-verbal cues of body language and verbal cues of expressive phrases as they would in a real life conversation [12]. These behaviours are aimed at increasing closeness, encouraging communication, facilitating student input and self-disclosure, creating a sense of belonging, and establishing cognitive presence.…”