Technology, Transactional Distance, and Instructor Effectiveness: An Empirical Investigation

Abstract

For more than 15 years, a large university in the northwestern United States employed an interactive television system to provide statewide distance learning. Many business professors contended that this technology adversely affected students' ratings of their effectiveness, especially at the receiving sites. Our analysis of instructor-evaluation data from 406 students in 15 courses taught by 14 instructors across 3 campuses revealed that the distance learning technology per se was not the problem; rather, it was transactional distance (i.e., dialogue and structure) as defined by Moore (1980, 1991) that affected perceived effectiveness. Transactional distance refers to the quality of the teaching and learning interaction between instructors and students who are geographically separated. We conclude that although interactive technology worked well for distance education, maintaining instructor effectiveness (i.e., lower transactional distance) results in a trade-off with efficiency.