Quality Of Online Interaction Research Articles

Students are at risk? Elucidating the impact of health risks of COVID-19 on emotional exhaustion and academic performance: role of mindfulness and online interaction quality.

Although previous online learning studies have looked at how student outcomes are influenced in different settings, this study is unique in that it looks at the role of COVID-19 as a particular stressor. This study discussed how students' perceptions of health risks of COVID-19 (PHRC) influenced their academic performance through emotional exhaustion. This study also looked at how mindfulness and online interaction quality (OIQ) affected PHRC's direct effects on exhaustion, as well as PHRC's indirect effects on academic performance via exhaustion. The data for the current study were collected from 336 students in three waves who were studying online during COVID-19. The results through structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed that PHRC influenced academic performance. The results further revealed that mindfulness and OIQ attenuated the direct effects of PHRC on emotional exhaustion as well as indirect effects on academic performance through emotional exhaustion. This study provides some novel implications for practice and research.

Incorporating fantasy into gamification promotes student learning and quality of online interaction

We used the design-based research approach to test and refine a theoretically grounded goal-access-feedback-challenge-collaboration gamification model. The testbed was a 10-week, university-level e-learning design course offered in two consecutive semesters. In Study 1, we implemented the initial goal-access-feedback-challenge-collaboration model in semester one of the 2020–2021 academic year (N = 26). The aim was to enhance student behavioral engagement in online discussion forums, affective engagement in the class, and learning performance. The results of Study 1 showed that although most participants were engaged in this gamified learning experience during the first two sessions, they gradually lost interest and their participation in online discussions dropped over the next eight weeks. Thus, we introduced a new element, fantasy, into the original model. In Study 2, we tested the effectiveness of the goal-access-feedback-challenge-collaboration-fantasy model on students’ learning outcomes in semester two of 2020–2021 (N = 23). The results of Study 2 suggested that, compared to the original model, the goal-access-feedback-challenge-collaboration-fantasy model can better promote students’ engagement in online discussion, as measured by increased interaction with peers, learning experience, and learning performance.

Effective Practices for Educators to Increase Online Interaction Quality

Amidst the Covid-19 Pandemic is still with us, the teaching and learning process has undergone a revolution towards digital academia. Educators doubt whether large online classes are effective because virtual classrooms hinder good communication as learners do not interact meaningfully to class lectures. This study aims to examine the ways that self-efficacy can help to enhance online interaction in terms of student-content, student-student, student-teacher and student-medium and to investigate whether these interaction types are influential in the moderating effect of the perceived harm of getting COVID-19.This is a cross-sectional study which employs quantitative methods using a questionnaire that is designed based on the Social Capital Theory and consists of two domains. A sample of 641 learners who have experienced Online Distance Learning whether in secondary school, foundation, diploma, or degree programme reported their virtual learning experience. This study reveals that most of the participants agree that they obtained an effective online learning, nevertheless several issues related to a competent virtual learning needs to be solved such as the need to acknowledge students’ personality traits that are proactive could empower internet self-efficacy and online interaction quality. These research findings encourages for proactive interactions from all parties involved and the call for more relevant classroom activities and material that could ensure the success of virtual academia.

Examining response engagement in online interactions between US government agencies and citizens

PurposeEmail communication is indispensable for US state agencies to respond to citizen requests and engage with constituents, contributing to building trust in local governments. While prior studies examine the responsiveness of elected officials, the quality of virtual interactions between government organizations and citizens is often overlooked. This study aims to investigate how US government agencies capitalize on the potential of online interactions with constituents to manage generic queries and introduce the response engagement index (REI) consisting of response time, reactive transparency and message interactivity to evaluate levels of communicative engagement.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a field experiment encompassing emailing a request to 547 state agencies based in the five largest states and one small state. A total of 377 organizational responses were manually analyzed to reveal the usages of six communicative engagement strategies.FindingsThe results show the potential of online communication is underutilized as the average score of response engagement remains low. Human responses are less engaging than auto-reply messages and require a one-day waiting period, if not longer. Response types and gender of government communicators significantly differ in response time and engagement strategies. The findings identify divergent patterns of response engagement and provide practical implications for facilitating citizen engagement.Research limitations/implicationsThis research fills a critical gap by investigating the quality of online interactions between US government agencies and citizens. The authors develop a theory-grounded tool of response engagement to identify three features: response speed, reactive transparency and interactivity. The findings can improve the quality of email communication in state agencies, enhancing governance quality. The REI proposed here addresses what Pfau (2008) deemed problematic for communication scholarship: research is sparse on “functional issues” that examine the communication process. Pfau argued for research that provides knowledge of interest across disciplines so as to “cross-fertilize” ideas between political communication and public relations; this study sought to bridge that gap with a theoretical and practical tool for building public trust in governments.Practical implicationsTo support the evaluation of transparent and responsive governments, reliable and valid measurements are needed. The proposed REI provides practitioners with a theory-grounded tool to identify areas of engagement quality in government responses. The findings can be used to improve the quality of email communication in state agencies, enhancing governance quality.Social implicationsCitizens seek reciprocal dialogue through prompt, open and interactive communication. US state agencies should leverage the engagement features for increasing citizen trust – response time, reactive transparency and interactivity – when responding to public inquiries. Ultimately, trust in government agencies' interests in serving stakeholders cannot be strengthened without prompt and engaging responses to meet the public's needs.Originality/valueThis field experiment was one of the first to focus on US state agencies' responses to information requests. It introduces a new REI to assess communicative engagement in a government/citizen exchange.

THE AFTERMATH OF COVID-19 ON STUDENTS’ EDUCATION AND HEALTH IN INDIAN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS: A SURVEY

Aim. This paper aims to bring forth how the basic right of education got adversely affected due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The unplanned and immediate shift to online classes adversely affected the students’ physical and mental health as several issues that the students faced were related to the lack of adequate resources. Methods. The data for this paper were collected through a self-prepared and structured questionnaire, using Google forms, which was then circulated among different stakeholders of the educational institutes. The statistical analysis of the collected data was done using Microsoft Excel. Results and conclusion. According to the analysis of the survey, smartphones (75% of the total respondents) are relatively more accessible by students in comparison to computers or laptops (53%). And even if students had internet connectivity (57%), they faced issues of low data bandwidth (39%) leading to poor quality of online interaction in classes. Another important analysis suggested that 57% of students lacked a quiet room or space to attend the online classes in their homes. Finally, the negative impacts of online classes on the physical and mental health of students were also analysed. Cognitive value. The findings and the analysis of this paper would thus help teachers and institutions to understand students’ views and experiences of the pandemic. This understanding would help teachers to plan their teaching plans accordingly bridging the digital divide which would help students learn and grow.

Emotions, Demographics and Sociability in Twitter Interactions

The social connections people form online affect the quality of information they receive and their online experience. Although a host of socioeconomic and cognitive factors were implicated in the formation of offline social ties, few of them have been empirically validated, particularly in an online setting. In this study, we analyze a large corpus of geo-referenced messages, or tweets, posted by social media users from a major US metropolitan area. We linked these tweets to US Census data through their locations. This allowed us to measure emotions expressed in the tweets posted from an area, the structure of social connections, and also use that area's socioeconomic characteristics in analysis. %We extracted the structure of online social interactions from the people mentioned in tweets from that area.We find that at an aggregate level, places where social media users engage more deeply with less diverse social contacts are those where they express more negative emotions, like sadness and anger. Demographics also has an impact: these places have residents with lower household income and education levels. Conversely, places where people engage less frequently but with diverse contacts have happier, more positive messages posted from them and also have better educated, younger, more affluent residents. Results suggest that cognitive factors and offline characteristics affect the quality of online interactions. Our work highlights the value of linking social media data to traditional data sources, such as US Census, to drive novel analysis of online behavior.

Research on the Online Interactive Mode of “One Village, One University Student” Program Course: From an OBE Perspective

Since its inception in 2004, the “One Village, One University Student” (hereinafter referred to as the OVOUS program) , an educational program led by the Ministry of Education of China, has cultivated a large number of talents who have excellent management skills, which effectively promoted the economy in rural areas. Under the rural revitalization strategy, the ever-changing infrastructure construction in rural areas has also led to the development of rural modernized industries; and the development of these modernized industries is bound to put higher requirements on the quality of rural practitioners. The OVOUS program is deeply embedded and serves the rural grassroots. It should also keep pace with the times and continue to develop and innovate in the educational model. During the survey, we found that a large number of rural students have a strong demand for upgrading the original online courses, and the mechanical one-way teaching output can no longer meet their learning needs; and since the COVID-19 epidemic, many practical courses in the OVOUS program have encountered a big bottleneck in the implementation of teaching and interactions. And the teaching effect has been greatly affected, especially under the actual conditions of online interaction of the whole course, the quality of online interaction is not ideal. To inspire those students from rural areas to have stronger motivations in participating in the OVOUS program especially during post-epidemic era is the starting point of our research; and the purpose of our research is to discover the way to enable these students to learn better and achieve better performances through those effective online interactions.

The COVID 19 pandemic and digital higher education: Exploring the impact of proactive personality on social capital through internet self-efficacy and online interaction quality

• During COVID pandemic, proactive personality strengthens online interaction quality and Internet self-efficacy. • The interceding effect of online interaction quality is significant between proactive personality and social capital. • Internet self-efficacy does not mediate between proactive personality and social capital. • Perceived social support catalyzes the mediating effect of online interaction quality. In the crisis of COVID-19, traditional learning suddenly changed to digital learning, which finally posed challenges to students and teachers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the influence of personality factors on student social networks seems to be an overlooked area of research. In this study, we aim to explore the relationship between proactive personality and social capital through underlying mechanisms (such as internet self-efficacy and online interaction quality), especially to obtain data during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, this study also aims to examine the moderating role of perceived social support in the association between proactive personality and Internet self-efficacy and the association between proactive personality and online interaction quality. Similarly, the moderating influence of perceived social support also investigated the mediating effects of internet self-efficacy & online interaction quality. This study used online survey tools to collect data from 332 respondents, including students and teachers from Islamabad, the federal capital of Pakistan. In this study, we found that the proactive personality of students strengthened their social capital through online interaction quality during the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, perceived social support strengthened the mediating effect of online interaction quality in the association between proactive personality and social capital during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the implications and future research directions are also discussed.

Testing the Waters

This study presents an innovative approach to developing interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) by training students to engage in online participatory cultures and analyzing their participation through the lens of communities of practice. Participants were university-level English language learners studying in the United States who were trained on the basic layout and practices of a social news and discussion site (Reddit), then assigned weekly postings within forums based on their individual interests. Social media engagement metrics (upvotes and responses) were used to measure and observe the quantity and quality of online interaction, and post-task questionnaires and follow-up interviews investigated learner perceptions about the language and cyberpragmatics in the online communities they encountered. Quantitative results show that participants struggled to achieve high levels of interaction with other users, but qualitative results indicate a wide range of potential benefits for ILP exploration and development. The findings and implications of this study contribute towards best practices in developing strategies for ILP in online spaces and cyberpragmatic awareness among language learners, enabling them to reach higher levels of participation in online communities.

Physiological changes during first encounters and their role in determining the perceived interaction quality

AbstractWhat determines if the first interaction between strangers will be a pleasant experience? We conducted an experiment to investigate the extent to which the perceived quality of an interaction is influenced by conversation content and context, and we document the physiological changes that are likely to play a role in establishing rapport. Females who did not know each other met in pairs and conducted a gossip- or creativity task, either face-to-face or online. The conversation content had no effect on the quality of online interactions. However in the face-to-face condition gossip was associated with better interaction quality. Tonic electrodermal activity steadily declined throughout the interaction, while phasic electrodermal activity first peaked and then returned to baseline. Neither were related to perceived interaction quality. Heart rate variability (HRV) dropped at first but then remained stable. A smaller drop in HRV drop corresponded to higher ratings of rapport and liking. Together these results suggest that gossip can improve the quality of a face-to-face interaction between strangers, and support the conjecture that parasympathetic activity is a marker of human openness to social engagement.

The Culture of Professional Self-Realization as a Fundamental Factor of Students’ Internet Communication in the Modern Educational Environment of Higher Education

This article deals with the problem of the culture of professional self-realization of Russian students in the process of university education at the present stage. The role of information and communications technologies is revealed, in particular the interactive technology of self-regulation developed by the authors, as a necessary pedagogical condition for the successful professional self-realization of students. The paper describes the interactive technology of self-regulation formation used in teaching a foreign language in order to improve the educational process. The paper provides an analysis of the current state of the classroom educational environment in teaching a foreign language in order to determine the possibilities of improving the educational process. The main goal of the interactive technology of self-regulation formation is to optimize and intensify the activities of students in the classroom and extracurricular activities. The interactive technology of self-regulation formation in a nonlinguistic university was applied in the proposed work. Special attention was paid to the problem of structuring and the algorithmization of independent work. Ways for increasing interactivity are revealed, and an algorithm for teaching and speech actions in interactive mode was developed. It was established that the introduction of structured algorithmization using the interactive technology of self-regulation formation could be effectively used for teaching poorly prepared students. It has been established that the culture of professional self-actualization for modern students is directly dependent on the quality of online interaction with a university teacher. It was revealed that it is the student’s awareness of the objectives of learning interaction and ways for its implementation that allow him to competently perform his academic work, which in turn contributes to the actualization of personal professional qualities that are required by a university graduate for successful implementation in the future.

Adult learners’ social connectedness and online participation: the importance of online interaction quality

ABSTRACTOnline interaction has been associated with positive outcomes, academically and psychologically. Regarding the latter, social connectedness has been recognised as an important outcome on the basis of its link to subjective well-being and course satisfaction. In adult educational settings, how online interaction can foster social connectedness has not been widely examined. The study investigates how (1) adult learners’ online participation operationalised as discussion contribution, collaborative facilitation, and social interaction, and (2) their perceived online interaction quality are related to their feeling of social connectedness. The role of online interaction quality related to the three types of online participation and social connectedness is also examined. A questionnaire was developed to collect data from adult learner participants in Belgium (N = 170). Multiple regressions and mediation analysis were conducted. The result shows that collaborative facilitation and online interaction quality significantly contribute to adult learners’ perceptions of social connectedness. Furthermore, the finding reveals that online interaction quality fully mediates the relationship between discussion contribution, social interaction, and social connectedness. Thus, the implications for research and instructional design are discussed.

Effects of core self-evaluation and online interaction quality on adults' learning performance and bonding and bridging social capital

Whilst emphasizing adult learners' characteristics as being different from traditional students, few studies have taken into account a broad personality trait, i.e. core self-evaluation (CSE), when explaining their learning performance. Additionally, existing studies confirm the vital role of adult education in the inclusion process of citizens in our contemporary society. However, questions remain unanswered as to what specific factors of the learning environment contribute to these social outcomes, except in educational programmes explicitly directed at social inclusion. Responding to this literature gap, the present study (1) investigated the effect of CSE and online interaction quality on adults' learning performance and (2) scrutinized how online interaction quality and learning performance affect their bonding and bridging social capital. Participants (N=140) were learners from a blended learning programme in centres for adult education in Belgium. Path analyses showed that only CSE significantly predicted adults' learning performance. Online interaction quality was found to have a significant effect on learners' bonding and bridging social capital, but not learning performance. To this end, the findings highlight the importance of dispositional factors regarding adults' achievement in a blended learning environment and the potential of such programmes to enhance their social outcomes in addition to cognitive gains.

Investigation of Participation and Quality of Online Interaction

Advances in computer mediated communication technologies have sparked and continue to facilitate the proliferation of online courses, degree programs, and educational institutions. Leading the way with these advances has been the use of asynchronous discussion forums. However merely setting up a discussion forum does not always ensure quality participation and interaction. The way the course is managed has an impact on the participation as well. This paper compares the difference in course management over four study periods and discusses the resulting consequences on the participation and achievement of the students. This paper also investigates the quality of interaction as perceived by fully online students. The main benefits of this research are that it provides a guideline regarding what course management factors can make the difference in online participation in fully online courses, and how the quality of interaction can be designed.

Online interaction arrangements on quality of online interactions performed by diverse learners across disciplines

This in-situ, causal-comparative study examined the difference in the quality of online discussions performed by learners with diversity in age and ethnicity status within different online interaction arrangements. Data was collected from 463 students in 19 online courses mainly via a content analysis with online interaction transcripts and an artifact analysis of online course sites and documents. The findings indicated a negative correlation between older adult students and online discussions of individualistic knowledge construction. The interaction arrangement prioritizing the student-to-student interaction reinforced knowledge-constructive online discussions. The interaction arrangement with a balanced requirement of student-to-content, student-to-instructor, and student-to-student interactions promoted reflective learning discussions. There is disciplinary effect on the interactivity and the amount of social and knowledge-sharing discussions.

Exploratory study on the patterns of online interaction and knowledge co-construction in project-based learning

This study aims to investigate the patterns and the quality of online interaction during project-based learning (PjBL) on both micro and macro levels. To achieve this purpose, PjBL was implemented with online group activities in an undergraduate course. Social network analysis (SNA) and content analysis were employed to analyze online interaction during project work. According to the SNA results generated from the online discussion boards, the group cohesiveness of seven teams, indicated by density indices, varied considerably, from as low as 9.81 to as high as 30.00. Regarding the content analysis of two teams with high project scores (Teams F and G), team members not only shared information (Phase I), but also identified the areas of disagreement and clarified the goals and strategies (Phase II). They also conducted some negotiations (Phase III). However, team members with low project scores (Teams C and E) shared information and stated their opinions in most cases (Phase I), with not much social construction in the higher level. Although both Team C and G showed high level of group cohesiveness among the seven teams, it is notable that the high-performing Team G dedicated nearly 39.3 percent of online discussion to negotiating and co-constructing knowledge, contrary to the 5.9 percent of low-performing Team C. Based upon the findings, some implications were proposed for further research.

Rethinking the nature of online work in asynchronous learning networks

AbstractResearch on asynchronous learning networks (ALNs) has indicated that there are problems with both the quantity and quality of online interactions that can undermine the aim of inquiry. The goal of this paper is to offer a new way of thinking about these problems in the context of knowledge building, a specific form of collaborative inquiry supported by an ALN. Drawing from interviews with teachers following two teacher education courses that introduced teachers to knowledge building, it is argued that we need to rethink the role and purpose of online work in ALNs—as building a communal learning resource. A framework for doing this is proposed in terms of three notions: collaboration, learning how to learn and idea improvement. The framework is expected to contribute to the literature on knowledge building by providing a new way to distinguish knowledge building from other forms of collaborative inquiry.