Student and faculty perceptions of interaction in two-way interactive television classrooms

This study investigated whether two-way interactive television classrooms were actually interactive, whether students and faculty perceived them to be interactive, the degree to which student and faculty perceptions were consistent with observed levels of interaction, the effects of student and faculty beliefs on their perceptions of interaction, and the effects of beliefs and perceptions on satisfaction. Subjects were 58 students (local n=31, remote n=27) and four faculty in Industrial Engineering courses taught Spring semester, 1993, at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. All four courses included students at the local site and two remote locations, and used a CODEC two-way interactive television system. Questionnaires were used to gather data on student and faculty demographic characteristics, expressed beliefs about and preferences for interaction, perceptions of interaction in the classes studied, and satisfaction with the interactive television system. Correlation analysis and t-tests were used for data analysis. Findings included: 1) Faculty and students expressed similar beliefs about the importance and desirability of interaction. 2) Students expressed a preference for greater proportions of class time spent in interaction than did faculty. 3) The interactive television classes accommodated interaction, at least to the degree that the faculty desired. 4) Actual levels of interaction in the classes approximated the instructors' stated preferences, with proportion of class time spent in interaction varying more between instructors than between sessions of a class taught by the same instructor. 5) Students and faculty were more accurate in estimating proportion of class time spent on interaction than in estimating proportion of interaction from each of the three sites. 6) Students' expressed beliefs about interaction did not influence their perceptions of levels of interaction. 7) Some student beliefs about the importance and desirability of interaction were positively correlated with measures of satisfaction with the interactive television system. 8) Students and faculty reported general satisfaction with audio and video quality and overall performance of the interactive television system, but students expressed greater satisfaction with overall levels of interaction than did faculty. 9) All of the faculty, but only 30% of the students, reported perceiving the level of interaction in the interactive television classes to be less than in traditional classrooms.