Analysis of Virtual and Traditional Teaching Assistants Used in Introductory to Animal Science Courses

NACTA Journal, Sep 2005 by Day, M L, Orvis, K S, Latour, M A

Statistical Analysis

A continuous Likert-type scale was chosen for this study (Brown, 1988). The Likert-type scale consists of a series of declarative statements to measure participants' perceptions on an attitudinal scale. Quantitative data were analyzed by ANOVA using SAS? system (SAS, 2002). Means were partitioned using a student t-test. Significant differences were determined at P

Results

There were no significant (P > 0.85) differences in student assessment of teaching assistants for overall satisfaction between ANSC101V and ANSC102; that is, regardless of teaching assistant, students were equally pleased with the level of overall satisfaction. The demographic data, however, would suggest the students were very different; that is, 92% of the students in ANSC101V were above the age of 22, where as 84% were below the age of 22 in ANSC102 (Table 1). ANSC101V contained 80% females and 20% males, while ANSC102 had 64% females and 36% males (Table 1).

Students in ANSC101V felt encouraged (P

Discussion

In this study, students were exposed to two separate learning environments, one from a distance and one from a traditional classroom. Student scoring for teaching assistants were similar between courses, and found not to be different in the questions proposed and the primary differences noted were those between questions. As evidenced in the results section, student responses between ANSC101V and ANSC102 were significantly different for five of the six sections of questions, with the last section, to test overall satisfaction, being statistically similar.

Three of the five questions related to discussion were found to be significant. One question referred to the teaching assistant encouraging questions and expressions of ideas. Online students rated this question much higher than traditional campus students; thereby, suggesting that online students were perhaps encouraged to ask questions and feel freedom to express ideas. This result may be due to the number of contacts teaching assistants had with the online students; that is, online students as observed in the administrative portion of WebCT, the software program used for online instruction demonstrated daily interaction between students and assistants and this is not the case for on campus instruction. Traditional students felt they were much more active with discussion than the online subjects. This was an expected response, due to the traditional campus students experiencing a campus classroom environment each week. Fulford and Zhang (1993) suggested that in a distance course the lack of face-to-face interaction may cause the learner to drift away and lose focus on the learning and discussion that is taking place. It was assumed that the higher face-to-face interaction between the traditional campus students would result in a feeling of more active discussion and participation. Latour and Collodi (2003) showed that maturity level has a great influence on "acceptance" as well as retention of distance learning materials.

In this study, the students in ANSC101V were considerably older which suggest they are more willing to accept the technology and demanded more interaction of course material when compared to on campus students who were much younger. For instance, when students were asked to rate their feeling of responsibility to initiate discussion within the classroom, online subjects rated this nearly two-fold higher than campus students and might suggest, the online students felt more responsible for discussion. This finding supports the idea of teaching effectiveness through the "centrality" of power (Richmond and McCroskey, 1984). The former authors identify the role of teacher to be function of influence, power, and communication. For the online learners, there is no physical classroom where the professor and teaching assistants can play this role. Therefore, the online learner feels a greater responsibility in assisting with these roles that are unable to be filled in a distance classroom.