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Editor's Note: "Targeting Distance Education to Undergraduate Students" raises issues about the nature and experiences of online students. Dr. Irani's research is well constructed and provides material for future online class instruction designers and educators.

Targeting Distance Education to Undergraduate Students: Influences on Traditional-aged Students Intent to Enroll in a Distance Education Course

Tracy Irani

Abstract

As various forms of teaching with technology, from full-blown distance education using telecommunications and asynchronous, computer-based learning to in-class use of computers and interactive communications technologies become more common in courses aimed at undergraduate students, questions related to understanding these students' attitudes and perceptions, as well as the effect of the experience of such technologies on subsequent adoption behavior, become increasingly more important.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of moderating variables on the attitude-behavior relationship within the context of traditional aged students' experience of distance education. The study used a quasi-experimental design, set up to measure before and after effects of a distance education treatment and subjective norms influences on a sample of university undergraduates with no prior experience of distance education.

Results of the study indicated that subjects had significant positive attitude-behavior correlations that increased over the time of measurement. For those subjects who did not receive the distance education treatment, exposure to subjective norms information in the form of a newspaper article designed to present the views of fellow students toward distance education significantly affected the likelihood of their intent to take such a course in the future. Finally, linear regression analysis revealed that for all subjects, as well as for the subjects who remained in the live classroom setting, attitude and subjective norms were the most important predictor variables of behavioral intent to enroll in a course delivered at a distance, while the attitude variable was the only significant predictor of behavioral intent for the direct experience treatment group.

Introduction

When institutional philosophers and visionaries contemplate what the university of the future will look like, their visions may focus more on virtual computer networks than on traditional brick-and-mortar. Some college and university administrators, noting that large numbers of traditional, on-campus undergraduate students are enrolling in greater numbers in distance education courses, have been proposing "virtual universities" where modems take the place of classroom podiums (Guernsey, 1998). Indeed, corporate management consultants such as Peter Drucker have gone so far as to predict the demise of the traditional university classroom, calling it "inefficient and overpriced" as compared to distance education delivery methods (Bray, 1999).

The rationale for addressing the perspectives of college undergraduates as a potential market for distance education courses stems from the premise that the traditional on campus student represents a very different market than the non-traditional adult learners most distance education programs have been accustomed to serving. Non-traditional students, older, place-bound adult learners with work and family responsibilities, have been in the forefront of the distance education adoption cycle, consisting of the "early adopters" of this technological innovation (Rogers, 1995).

If this educational innovation is to be successful long term, however, adult learners will be followed by more mainstream, traditional-aged students. These "early majority" adopters are currently being offered the choice of taking distance education courses by a growing number of traditional institutions of higher learning. Yet, since they lack the personal and professional incentives of the early adopters, the motivations for these students to engage in this particular adoption behavior may be dramatically different from those of the traditional adult learner.

For some undergraduates, the opportunity to take a distance education course may be attractive, perhaps, because it is a convenient and novel approach to the process of education. For others, however, beliefs about some of the potential drawbacks of this type of learning experience, such as the lack of structure provided by a live instructor, or lack of access or proficiency with a computer, may negatively affect attitudes and intent to take such a course. As one faculty member put it, "The thought of putting 19-year-olds and 20-year-olds into a program where they have no contact with teachers, no contact with fellow students, no contact with libraries, no contact with the atmosphere of a university - it's very disturbing" (Bray, 1999, p. 3). Yet, although most of the field studies that have been done on generalized student attitudes toward distance learning report a preference for traditional group "real time" learning, studies also report an escalating level of student demand and participation for such courses (Simonson, Johnson, & Neuberger, 1997).

On the other hand, from an institutional perspective, the decision to offer expanded distance education courses and programs is equally complex. Decision-making may stem from such issues as overcrowding and lack of interaction in large survey classes, to the cost and difficulty of building new lecture halls and support facilities, to the desire to open up new marketing territories and compete with other schools on the basis of adding new programs tailored to students in suburban and rural markets.

Given the above, the study of adoption behavior as it relates to technology-based distance education is important, from the perspective that the success of distance education programs in higher education ultimately will be determined as a function of whether or not traditional as well as non-traditional students can be motivated to participate, as well as how positively or negatively they feel about their experience. Just as advertising is typically concerned with the formation of positive attitudes which in turn are presumed to drive behavior, educators and institutions of higher learning need to be concerned with understanding how factors that impact student attitudes may or may not affect behavior if they are to be successful in constructing distance education courses that effectively reach and subsequently teach their students.

The limited research that has been done in this area seems to suggest that student attitudes and may in fact be impacted more by level of experience than by more generalized attitudes toward non-traditional learning. For example, studies of distance education students consistently report positive attitudes toward their course experience, while studies focusing on more generalized student attitudes toward the concept itself are more mixed in terms of results (Jones, 1992; McElveen & Roberts, 1992). This may be due, perhaps, to the effect of degree of experience and familiarity as moderating variables impacting students' attitudes.

It may be the case that undergraduate students in particular, a significant percentage of whom lack any direct experiences with distance learning, are less certain of their beliefs, and tend to turn to the influence of peers and the persuasively crafted arguments of others when attempting to formulate their attitude and intentions. In such a circumstance, the resulting correspondence between attitudes and subsequent behavioral intent could be affected, depending on prevailing points of view within the relevant circles of reference.

Conceptual and Theoretical Framework

One of the frameworks which can be used to understand the correspondence between attitude and behavior is the Theory of Planned Behavior (TOPB) (Ajzen, 1991). The model could be applied to intent to take a distance education course as follows: behavior B(enrolling in a distance delivered course) is affected by one's intent to behave, or BI(such as intent to enroll in such a course), itself a function of attitudes toward the target behavior and subjective norms. In the TOPB, attitudes are a function of beliefs about and assessments of perceived consequences of acting in a certain way, such as beliefs about the advantages or disadvantages of technology based, non-traditional instruction. Subjective norms refer to an individual's interpretation of what important referents think about the desirability of a behavior, combined with the individual's desire and motivation to comply with what significant others may think or believe should be done. Perceived behavioral control, in this context, could be assumed to measure degree of control and efficacy subjects perceive with respect to the target behavior.

Within the specific context of this study, the correspondence between students' attitudes and intention to enroll in a distance education course might be most significantly affected by their level of experience, as well as by their subjective norms perceptions. Those students with direct experience should have a fairly strong attitude-behavior correspondence. For those students who have not yet adopted the technology represented by the target behavior, however, it may be the case that their behavioral intent could be more strongly impacted by the opinions of relevant normative influences, such as fellow students, than for those students with experience.

This study therefore was designed in an attempt to answer the following questions:

How does direct experience of distance education influence the attitudes of undergraduate students with no prior experience, as well as the relationship between their attitude and behavioral intent to take a distance education course?

For those students who lack experience of such learning environments, how do evaluatively oriented moderating factors, such as subjective norms influences, impact their behavioral intent toward taking such a course?

How does experience affect the linear combination of components that could be used to predict students' intent to take a distance education course?

Methods

The research design was quasi-experimental in nature. To conduct the study, given the nature of the treatment manipulation, a convenience sample of students enrolled in two large service courses was utilized. Subjects in each class were first pre-tested, then randomly assigned to either the experimental treatment or control conditions through utilization of a random numbers table as follows:

a). Half the sample (direct experience condition) were assigned to participate in a week-asynchronously delivered course module featuring the same instructor and content, but delivered via videotape and the Internet;

b). The other half of the sample (indirect experience condition) were assigned to remain in the traditional live classroom.

In addition to the experience treatment conditions, the subject norms variable was also manipulated. Treatment conditions involved randomly assigning subjects to be exposed to one of three versions of a newspaper article placed as a separate page within the questionnaire packet. The article contained information and statistics regarding fellow students' opinions toward distance learning. These opinions were either positive or negative in nature, as indicated in the excerpt from the positive subjective norms treatment condition below:

Eighty-eight Percent of UF Students Surveyed
Say They Are in Favor of Distance Education

In conjunction with the implementation of the University of Florida's new computing requirement, researchers at the university recently conducted a survey of student attitudes toward using technology-based distance education methods to deliver more classes for undergraduates. The survey described "technology based distance education" as courses in which the lecture was conducted using video; lecture notes and assignments were available on the Internet; and instructor and students communicated solely through email and online bulletin board sessions.

According to the survey, 88% of students who were questioned said they were in favor of the university investing in distance education in order to offer more undergraduate courses delivered in this method. Seventy per cent of students surveyed stated that they would be interested in taking a distance education course like the ones described in the survey in the next year.

In addition to the positive and negative versions of the article, a control group received a neutral version, and their responses were compared to the two treatment groups. To insure face, content and construct validity, the instrument and treatment materials were pilot-tested and appropriately adjusted prior to administration. In addition, a series of manipulation checks were utilized to insure validity of the experimental manipulations and sampling frame.

Definition of Scales

The scale instrument for the study was a 64-item questionnaire. Subjects' attitudes toward distance learning were measured on the basis of six Likert scale items with scores coded to range from one to seven, with one being the most negative and seven being the most positive. Subjective norms and perceived behavioral control were both constructed as four item indexes. As in the TOPB, each of the above factors was calculated on the basis of a weighted index, comprised of, for attitude, attitude, belief elicitations and evaluation items; for subjective norms, norms and motivation to comply items; and for perceived behavioral control, control beliefs and efficacy evaluation items. Subjects' behavioral intent was measured on the basis of a four-item index, with values ranging from one for least likely to engage in the target behavior to seven for most likely.

Alpha reliability coefficients for the indices ranged from .98 for the attitude index to .55 for the behavioral index.

Results

To insure a clean manipulation of the experience treatment condition, subjects were asked in the pre-test to indicate if they had had any previous experience with asynchronous learning or technology based distance education. Based on their response, subjects with prior experience were removed from the sample, which resulted in a final nof 72 subjects. After data collection, descriptive statistics were used to summarize the data. General demographics were obtained from the sample for gender, year in school and computer ownership. Responses indicated that 68% of the subjects were male, and 32% were female. Eighteen percent were freshmen, 28% were sophomores, 36% were juniors, 21% were seniors and 1% were graduate students. Of this number, the vast majority -- over 83% -- owned a computer.

Overall, after treatment, subjects' attitudes toward enrolling in a distance education course were most positive for those in the direct experience condition (M = 3.99), and least positive for those in the indirect experience condition (M = 3.65). Individual overall item responses for all subjects for the attitude index items are shown in Table 1.

Table 2 shows the responses for the direct and indirect groups.

Attitude Behavior Relationship

Subjects' attitudes did show significant positive correlations with their behavioral intent, increasing in magnitude from pretest to post test for all groups. For all subjects, the correlation between attitude and behavior increased from r = .27 to r =.47. For those subjects in the direct experience condition, the attitude-behavior correlation increased from r = .30 to r = .43, while for those subjects in the in the live classroom condition, the attitude behavior correlation increased from a relatively low r= .18 to r = .42. All correlations were significant at the p < .05 level.

Change in Behavioral Intent

To assess the impact of experience and subjective norms on behavioral intent, it was hypothesized that there would be an interaction between subjective norms and time (pre-test/posttest) such that change in behavioral intent would decline for subjects in the indirect experience condition who were exposed to the newspaper article with negative subjective norms information and increase for subjects in the indirect experience condition who were exposed to the article with positive information. Repeated measures ANOVA was used to test for interactions. No three-way interactions were found. Tests for two way interactions showed no significant differences in behavioral intent from pre-test to post-test for direct experience subjects in any of the treatment conditions, F (1, 41)=. 381, p <. 6. For subjects in the indirect experience condition, however, there was an interaction between print message treatment and time of measure, F (1, 22) = 2.98, p < .01. Comparison of means indicated that, for subjects in the indirect experience group who were exposed to the positive newspaper article, behavioral intent significantly increased from T1 to T2, while for subjects in the negative and neutral conditions, behavioral intent decreased. Table 3 displays the behavioral intent means table grouped by message stimulus and time (pre-test and post-test) for subjects in the indirect experience group.

To determine how level of experience might affect the combination of factors that could be used to predict students' intent to take a distance education course, intent to take a distance education course was regressed in a linear regression model consisting of the variables attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. Intent was regressed first for all subjects, then only subjects in the indirect experience group, and then only subjects in the direct experience group. Results indicated that the attitude and subjective norms variables accounted for the most significant portion of variance in behavioral intent for the indirect experience group, as well as for all subjects. For the direct experience group, attitude was the only significant predictor variable. Table 4 displays the regression coefficients, beta weights and R² for each analysis.

Discussion

Results of this study suggest that the student subjects were clearly affected by both their experience and the print message containing the subjective norms influence. This seems to provide some support for the idea that students who hold weakly held attitudes as a result of their lack of experience of distance education may be susceptible to subjective norms influences and the messages that contain them.

Along these same lines, the implications of the regression analyses seem fairly straight forward, and provide some additional support for the influence of subjective norms on students who lack experience of distance education. For those subjects in the direct experience treatment condition, i.e., those who received a direct experience of distance education, it was anticipated that attitude would be a strong predictor of behavioral intent toward distance education. Based on the results, it seems likely that these subjects' experience served to foster a fairly consistent attitude-behavior relationship, making attitude the most significant predictor of behavioral intent for this group. For those subjects without direct experience, both attitude and subjective norms significantly contributed to the regression model, with subjective norms accounting for the most significant amount of variance in intent. This provides additional support for the argument that lack of experience of distance education served to significantly increase students' susceptibility to external influences.

Conclusion and Recommendations

In discussing the state of distance education research, Dillon and Walsh (1992) contended that most research on distance education students has been linear, focused on the "back end" -- learning outcomes, learning characteristics, and learner attitudes. Then, as now, less attention has been given to the question of what gets students in the front door -- what factors predispose students to enroll, or conversely, make them less likely to take distance education courses.

To that end, the results of this study suggest that students who lack experience of distance education may be a more challenging audience than many educators realize. These students are being asked to engage in an adoption behavior for which they have very little contextual basis. Based on the results of this study, targeting the right student audience and ensuring that students' course experiences are positive and generate positive word of mouth to peers may be critical to increasing adoption rates and attaining long-term viability for distance education with undergraduate audiences.

This study also points out how important proper planning and care in structuring the "standard" distance education experience might be. If, as is this study, many current and prospective undergraduate students' attitudes and behaviors toward taking distance education classes are relatively weak, their susceptibility to relevant peers' attitudes and opinions could be an unexpected influence. As institutions of higher learning seek to continue to expand distance education offerings to undergraduate students, it will therefore be even more important to have a sense of who the market is for these courses and how likely it is that they will continue to enroll in new and ongoing courses and programs.

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About the Author

Tracy Irani is an assistant professor of agricultural communication in the University of Florida's Department of Agricultural Education and Communication. Dr. Irani received her bachelor's degree in journalism and communication from Point Park College, her master's degree in communication from Duquesne University and her doctorate in mass communication from the University of Florida.

Dr. Irani has extensive professional experience in video production, marketing and public relations. Distance education is a major research interest, and she has authored several peer-reviewed publications and made presentations at professional conferences on student and faculty perceptions and attitudes toward their distance education experiences.

Dr Irani can be reached at the Department of Agricultural Education and Communication, University of Florida, P.O. Box 110540, Gainesville, FL 32611-0504. Phone: (352) 392-0502, Fax: (352) 392-9585, email: irani@ufl.edu.