| Considered as the latest generation of distance education, online education fully employs the power of the Internet and brings education to a new era. It is expected that the online learner's population will constantly grow and more and more institutions will enter this field in the near future. This prediction is supported by many studies and reports. Because research has proven that interaction is an important component in a successful online course, searching for effective instructional strategies to foster appropriate online interaction is getting more and more attention. This study is designed to generate information about the online learners' and online instructors' attitudes toward four interaction attributes---content interaction, conversation and collaboration interaction, intrapersonal/metacognitive skills, and performance support.; Three primary objectives are included in this study: (1) to identify the most important factors in each type of interaction as perceived by online learners; (2) to determine the order of the four types of interaction strategies in terms of the significance perceived by the student participants; and (3) to resolve whether previous online learning experience has effect on the learners' assessment of each type of interaction strategies and their overall evaluation of all strategies. Two sample groups, (1) online students who enrolled in the spring 2003 semester of the Idaho Virtual Campus at the University of Idaho, and (2) online instructors with limited or extensive online teaching experience who use the IVC system to deliver their online courses, were chosen for this investigation. Cronbach Alpha and factor analysis were used to check the instrument's reliability and validity; descriptive statistics, multiple regression, and one-way MANOVA were used to answer this study's research questions. An item-by-item comparison of the survey results learners without previous online learning experience and the online learners with previous online learning experience in the relative importance of the four interaction attributes and the overall strategy evaluation. The results of the ANOVAs disclosed that the difference actually only exists in the performance support attribute. As expected, the online learners without previous online experience demanded more supports than the online learners with previous learning experience.; In general, the survey responses of the instructor participants revealed similar perspectives on every strategy as those of the student participants. The interviews with the instructor participants also confirmed this discovery. However, some noticeable mean differences (mean difference >+/- .50) still existed between the two groups. Therefore, the next questions are how to realize the identified interaction strategies in online courses and how the recognition gap between online students and instructors could be narrowed. |
