Background/Rationale: Research tells us that technological pedagogies such as chat, e-mail, and video conferencing contribute to increasing student engagement and instructor -learner interaction. Students report increased learning, social knowledge, and inquiry when technological pedagogies were used in the online course room, such as audio feedback (West, Thomas & Borup, 2017; Carruthers, McCaron, Bolan, Devine, McMahon- Beattie & Burns, 2015; Moore, 1990).
Theoretical Framework: Audio feedback in asynchronous online courses is intended to allow students to experience a more personalized instructor interaction. In Moore’s (1990) seminal work on the Theory of Transactional Distance suggests that transactional distance exists on a continuum and any educational event is considered to have some aspect of distance. Increases in transactional distance increases learner autonomy, which is the responsibility of students to learn on their own; decrease in distance brings the learner closer to their teachers, the content, and other learners. Moore (1990) further stipulated that an active learning environment should include concepts of learner-instructor, learner- content, and learner-learner interactions. Together all are essential to an online sense of community. The conceptual framework, Community of Inquiry introduced in 2000 by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer dovetails nicely with Moore’s theory of online sense of community. Both concur that the use of audio rather than text online feedback may be effective in decreasing transactional distance, therefore, promoting teaching, social, and cognitive presence as perceived by online learners (Garrison, 2011).
Method/Description: A quasi-experimental posttest web survey design with a comparison group was used. The participants were a nonrandom convenience sample. The participants in the target population for this study were admitted to the university’s RN-BSN program and were enrolled in one of the eight sections of nursing courses selected for the study (N=139). Four sections received audio feedback and 4 sections received text only feedback in their discussion boards. The study used the Community of Inquiry survey comprised of 43 Likert style questions (Garrison, 2011). Subsections addressed teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence. Data were collected at week 14 of a 16-week semester. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the demographic data and SPSS to analyze the survey responses.
Results/Outcomes: Results from this quantitative, quasi-experimental study were analyzed using multiple regression. The sample size was large enough to achieve a moderate effect size. The data were normally distributed. The data also met all five standards for multiple regression linearity. Survey data were collected from 43 questions using a 5-point Likert scale. The data indicated that out of the three presences, teaching presence was the most significant predictor of student satisfaction and thus retention. Although, both positive and negative significant effects occurred, the data did not fully support any of the three alternative hypotheses. However, correlational statistics indicated a positive indicator for using audio within the online course in general for introductions and feedback on assignments but not in discussion boards.
Conclusion: The data reflected inverse results for teaching presence; both cognitive and social presences demonstrated insufficient evidence to predict a relationship to audio and text discussion board feedback. RN-BSN students perceived an increase in teaching presence when text feedback occurred in the online discussion board. Conversely, the perception of teaching presence decreased when the teacher used audio feedback in the online discussion board. This correlated with the findings of Hew and Wing (2013) on the use of audio versus text feedback in discussion boards.
Application/Recommendation for Nursing Education: Advancing technology, for example, using audio feedback to communicate with online students, was intended to allow learners to experience more personalized interactions with instructors. Perceptions of online communities reveal that students feel teaching presence is an important aspect of online learning, as they want available faculty that are willing to provide timely feedback, listen to concerns, and guide them through learning tasks (Richardson, Besser, Koehler, Lim, & Strait, 2016). Although the study described in this manuscript did not empirically support any of the proposed hypotheses, it did provide significant correlations which indicate that different uses of audio feedback in the online course room should be explored, such as audio introductions and assignment feedback and even the use of video (Thomas et al.,2017). The opportunity for further questioning on the constructs of the Community of Inquiry theoretical framework, audio feedback and online nursing education is also recommended.