Strategies for Enhancing Student Interaction and Immediacy in Online Courses

The increased demand for Internet courses, especially in schools of business, has raised questions about instructional interaction and teacher-student immediacy, which online courses may lack. Because current research suggests immediacy behaviors may indeed be present, we developed a strategy for measuring immediacy in an online MBA course and related the results to student grades on final team projects in the course. Learner-to-learner, noncontent-related statements showed minimal affective behavior, but that lack did not have a negative effect on grades. The study suggests that students do not automatically provide supportive feedback, compliment each other, and express appreciation or agreement unless the instructor builds a learning community and transfers interactive roles to the students themselves.