Abstract
In response to COVID-19, educational stakeholders are transferring traditional, face-to-face instruction to the online learning environment. The purpose of this study was to determine if business instructors’ use of immediate behaviors and clarity, which have been found to help business students overcome their writing apprehension in the face-to-face learning environment, can also be used to help business students to overcome their writing apprehension in an online learning environment. Findings indicated that instructor immediate behaviors and clarity are not interventions for writing apprehension in the online learning environment. The instructional strategies business instructors rely on in the face-to-face classroom did not have the same meaning or effect on the online classroom.
Keywords
Effective communication is the most essential skill new graduates must exhibit when entering the workforce (Maull, 2018), but many students and young professionals are prevented from displaying effective written communication skills because of their writing apprehension (Autman & Kelly, 2017; Daly & Miller, 1975). In the face-to-face classroom, business instructors are able to use nonverbal immediate behaviors and clarity to inoculate students against their writing apprehension, allowing them to fully develop their skills (Kelly & Gaytan, 2020). To date though, there has been no investigation to determine whether these same inoculations are effective in the online classroom.
Immediate behaviors include any set of communicative behaviors that result in decreased psychological distance between communicators (Mehrabian, 1981). For example, an instructor’s eye contact, relaxed posture, nonmonotonous tone, and smiling face are instructors’ immediate behaviors that lead to students feeling psychologically closer to their instructors and encouraged to increase communication with their instructors. As such, instructor immediate behaviors include any instructional communicative behavior that decreased the amount of psychological distance that students perceive to exist with their instructor (Zhang & Witt, 2016). The most commonly studied instructor immediate behaviors were adopted from psychiatry, which include a set of behaviors, such as the use of paralinguistics, eye contact, relaxed posture, forward lean, and smiling (Zhang & Witt, 2016) that, when displayed by a psychiatrist, typically lead to disclosure by patients (Mehrabian, 1981). Instructor clarity is the structural, verbal, and nonverbal behaviors exhibited by the instructor that results in students gaining an understanding of the content of a given course (Chesebro & McCroskey, 2001). For example, students gain a better understanding of the effect of social media on communication when instructors show an example of the way a message posted on social media reaches a very large audience. Another example is when instructors use signaling, where they encourage students to focus on the most important course content by developing and reviewing course content summaries and outlines.
The COVID-19 pandemic adds complexity to the already existing challenges associated with the lack of nonverbal immediate behaviors in the online learning environment that can inoculate learners against their writing apprehension in the face-to-face classroom. In response to COVID-19, higher education transitioned primarily (if temporarily) to distance learning, and educational stakeholders struggled to find new and effective instructional delivery mechanisms and innovative instructional strategies (Terenko & Ogienko, 2020). Goh and Sandars (2019) claimed that educational stakeholders must understand that education is now a digital world in which several technologies have challenged and transformed pedagogical activities. Iwai (2020) emphasized the need to effectively deliver instruction online to respond to the challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Part of effective delivery means ensuring that business instructors understand that the same instructional strategies they rely on in the face-to-face classroom do not always translate with the same meaning or effect into the online classroom (Kelly & Westerman, 2016).
The purpose of this study was to determine if business instructors’ use of immediate behaviors and clarity, which have been found to help business students overcome their writing apprehension in the face-to-face learning environment (Kelly & Gaytan, 2020), can also be used to help business students to overcome their writing apprehension in an online learning environment. As increasingly more business communication classes move online in light of the COVID-19 pandemic (Terenko & Ogienko, 2020), it is critical to know whether clarity and immediate behaviors can be relied on to help business students overcome their writing apprehension as distance learners or if other inoculations are needed. This study will have the following sections: (a) literature review; (b) perceived immediacy; (c) study rationale; (d) methodology, including participants, procedures, instrumentation; (e) study results; (f) discussion, including implications for business educators and for future research; and (g) conclusions.
Literature Review
Writing Pedagogy in Writing Apprehension, Clarity, and Computer-Mediated Immediate Behaviors
Early researchers conducted studies on the difficulties associated with teaching and learning with technology (Selfe & Hilligoss, 1994; Sullivan & Dautermann, 1996). More recently, researchers have demonstrated that technology-based learning environments require the use of new pedagogical writing theories (Salisbury, 2018). Some other researchers (Duin & Tham, 2020; Scott, 2017) have claimed that online instructors must become more familiar with the various levels of access to academic and learning analytics, acquainted with the analytical capabilities that the learning management system provides, and aware of the implications of learning analytics stemming from learning management system use in writing pedagogy. For instance, Wilson et al. (2017) claimed that Learning analytics are only likely to effectively and reliably enhance learning outcomes if they are designed to measure and track signals that are genuine indicators of, or proxies for, learning. To do this, they need to be grounded in robust and clearly articulated theories of learning. (p. 996)
Hamilton (2019) found that a hybrid pedagogy was effective in teaching writing pedagogy in the online learning environment. Hamilton also found that student reflection was critical in developing students' writing skills. However, the process of reflective pedagogy takes time and should be integrated into the entire business writing course.
Writing Apprehension in Online Learning
College students continue to exhibit writing apprehension, which translates into an avoidance of college writing courses and of the process of learning (Ahrens et al., 2016; Daly & Miller, 1975; Kelly & Gaytan, 2020). The term writing apprehension was developed by Daly and Miller (1975) to designate the angst they observed in some of their students when forced to write. Fischer et al. (2017) defined writing apprehension as “the interaction between attitudes toward writing and an individual’s motivations, confidence, and skills to complete a written task” (p. 255). Iksan and Abdul Halim (2018) found that online students can overcome writing apprehension and improve their writing skills when they are given an opportunity to write in a group where they are able to use their peer’s online feedback. Iksan and Abdul Halim concluded that when online learners get writing assistance from group members, online students’ feelings of isolation are lowered, resulting in lower levels of student writing apprehension.
Mabrito (2000) found that online students with a high level of writing apprehension participated more heavily in global newsgroups by posting more messages, writing longer messages, and starting new discussion posts than in local newsgroups. In addition, online students with a high level of writing apprehension expressed that they had more meaningful experiences and were more comfortable when communicating in global newsgroups than local ones. The main finding from Mabrito’s study was that students with a high level of writing apprehension communicate differently when communicating with a familiar audience (i.e., local newsgroups) versus an unknown audience (i.e., global newsgroups). In the global newsgroup environment, online students with a high level of writing apprehension felt less threatened because of the participants’ anonymity. Consequently, these students communicated more and in various ways than when they were in known local newsgroups. As a result, Mabrito recommended that online students with a high level of writing apprehension should be given more opportunities to write in situations that involve an audience outside the immediate classroom. After all, the online learning environment facilitates such outside experiences for online students with a high level of writing apprehension. Mabrito’s findings align rather well with Daly’s (1977) work in that an essential part of writing apprehension is the fact that writing for a known audience results in an increase in the writer’s stress level.
Clarity
Instructor clarity has an important role in student learning; however, it is very difficult to define (Titsworth et al., 2015). The unidimensional measure, developed by Chesebro and McCroskey (2001), represents the most common clarity measure used in instructional communication research studies. To gain a better understanding of instructor clarity, individuals could observe certain behaviors that instructors exhibit, including interacting with others, using signaling, providing examples, explaining concepts, and pacing (Bolkan, 2017). For instance, when instructors use signaling, they encourage students to focus on the most important course content by developing and reviewing course content summaries and outlines (Bolkan, 2017). Whenever instructors use confusing words and expressions, instructors lack clarity, negatively affecting student learning (Bolkan et al., 2016). In addition, whenever instructors use examples and explain the material, they increase clarity, affecting student learning positively (Bolkan et al., 2016).
Instructor clarity in the online classroom has different learning implications than the traditional classroom. Limperos et al. (2015) used theories from mass communication and education to develop lectures for the online learning environment, which included a 2 (modality) × 2 (clarity) factorial design to gain an improved understanding of the way mode variations (e.g., text only; audio and text) and structure/clarity of information (e.g., high clarity; low clarity) affected student perceptions regarding instructor closeness, credibility, and actual learning. Limperos et al. found that online lectures, delivered in a multimodal format, were more effective than lectures based on one mode format in developing students’ positive experiences with instructors and helping students understand the difference between perceived and actual learning.
Cicco (2016) claimed that clear expressions enhance communication in the online learning environment. Cicco recommended six steps online instructors could use to enhance communication in online courses:
Developing a clear and concise syllabus centered on student performance expectations related to academic integrity and professionalism.
Disclosing course objectives, assignments, rubrics, materials, and due dates before the course begins.
Using clear language consistently in all assignments and tests, avoiding misrepresentations or confusion.
Avoiding lengthy postings, announcements, and emails, focusing on using bullets to present different points.
Eliminating cognitive overload, which occurs when instructors provide a high amount of information.
Understanding that instructors must convince online learners to also practice clear communication and to prioritize tasks.
Computer-Mediated Instructor Immediate Behaviors
Before a discussion related to computer-mediated instructor immediate behaviors is presented, the effect of instructor immediate behaviors on student learning outcomes should be briefly presented. Instructor immediate behaviors have long been found to positively correlate with desirable classroom outcomes. In a meta-analysis of 81 studies, Witt et al. (2004) identified that instructor immediate behaviors consistently correlated positively with students’ perceived learning and affective learning. Instructor immediate behaviors have also been found to relate positively to students’ satisfaction with a course (Arbaugh, 2001), perception that their instructor is credible (Trad et al., 2014), self-efficacy for course material (Velez & Cano, 2012), and course performance (Bodie & Michel, 2014).
Although traditionally immediate behaviors were studied through the nonverbal channel (Allen et al., 2006), more recent research has recognized that immediate behaviors can be sent from any channel including verbal (Violanti et al., 2018) and computer-mediated (Kelly & Westerman, 2016). [Notably, verbal instructor immediate behaviors were studied briefly in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but relatively disappeared from the literature until recently due to validity issues with the original measurement (cf., Gorham, 1988; Kelly et al., 2010; Robinson & Richmond, 1995; Violanti et al., 2018).] Computer-mediated immediate behaviors, however, have only been studied for roughly a decade. Computer-mediated instructional immediacy (CMII) behaviors include behaviors such as personalizing electronic written messages by addressing the recipient by name and signing the messages (Kelly et al., 2010), inviting further communication (Kelly et al., 2010), affective language, and cohesive language (Christen et al., 2015), and appropriate use of emoticons and emojis (Vareberg & Westerman, 2020).
In the classroom, CMII behaviors have been found to correlate positively with students’ intrinsic motivation (Fall et al., 2011), state motivation for a course (Vareberg et al., 2020), retention rates, academic success (DellAntonio, 2017), and self-efficacy for course material (Fall et al., 2011). Notably, Vareberg et al. (2020) also found that students were more likely to reach out to instructors to engage in out-of-class communication, such as email or Zoom, if professors engaged in CMII behaviors. Christen et al. (2015) further found that undergraduates notice and crave CMII cues more strongly than graduate students. Like other communication channels in which instructor immediate behaviors can be sent, CMII behaviors have been found to relate positively to perceived immediacy (Violanti et al., 2018; Vareberg et al., 2020).
Perceived Immediacy
As aforementioned, immediate behaviors are those communicative behaviors that cause a reduction in perceived psychological distance (Mehrabian, 1981). The actual psychological closeness is perceived immediacy (Kelly et al., 2015). For decades, the immediacy research was plagued with conflation between the psychological distance communicators feel and the behaviors that cause the perceived psychological distance (Kelly & Westerman, 2016). This conflation led to a perception that while immediate behaviors were consistently positively correlated with desired classroom outcomes, they were accounting for relatively little of the variance in those classroom outcomes because the relationship between the immediate behaviors and outcomes were being tested as direct rather than indirect effects (Violanti et al., 2018). Indeed, recent research has consistently demonstrated that perceived immediacy mediates the relationships between instructor immediate behaviors and students’ classroom outcomes, such as student motivation (Vareberg et al., 2020), math anxiety (Kelly et al., 2015; Kelly, Liu, et al., 2018), affective learning (Kelly, Drye, & Williams, 2018), and writing apprehension (Kelly & Gaytan, 2020).
The display of instructor immediate behaviors typically leads to the desired outcomes in students, but this is not always the case as a variety of perceptual variables can change intended meaning of immediate behaviors (Kelly et al., 2020). In the case of CMII, if an instructor uses bold text to show affect in an email, but the student mistakes the intended tone of emphasis for yelling, then that CMII behavior will likely result in decreased perceived immediacy for that student. Indeed, Kelly et al. (2020) recently found that instructor misbehaviors of aggression and being boring also lead to a decrease in perceived immediacy. This means that displaying a checklist of identified immediate behaviors is not enough to guarantee positive classroom outcomes (Kelly et al., 2015).
In working with students online, Vareberg and Westerman (2020) found that when instructors use the CMII cue of emoticons, they consistently yield higher perceived immediacy with their students. Kelly and Westerman’s (2016) review of perceived immediacy in distance education asserts that the greater instructor’s perceived immediacy with students, the more students feel that their instructor is a real person and resource to be utilized rather than a digital entity on the other side of the screen. Yet, although CMII behaviors are a powerful instructional tool, they are not panacea and instructors must be vigilant to know both how their own computer-mediated immediate behaviors are perceived by their online students and the limitations of those behaviors to effectively engage their students.
Rationale
Kelly and Gaytan (2020) published a model of writing apprehension among business students in the face-to-face classroom, guided by the instructional beliefs model (IBM; Weber et al., 2011). The IBM explains that student learning is indirectly affected by three typologies of variables: instructor behaviors (e.g., immediate behaviors); student characteristics (e.g., intrinsic motivation); and classroom characteristics (e.g., fairness of grading). These typologies of variables indirectly affect student learning through the mediation of students’ beliefs about their own capabilities or their relationship with the instructor (i.e., self-efficacy; Kelly et al., 2020).
Kelly and Gaytan’s (2020) model, guided by the IBM, demonstrated that business communication instructors’ nonverbal immediate behaviors and clarity (i.e., instructor behaviors) indirectly lowered their students’ writing apprehension (i.e., affective learning) through the mediation of perceived immediacy (i.e., student belief) in face-to-face classrooms. Recently, a number of communication scholars have emphasized the importance of replicating studies in new samples rather than assuming that the results of a model hold across potentially moderating variables (Croucher & Kelly, 2020; McEwan, 2020; McEwan et al., 2018; Violanti et al., 2018). This article responds to that call by replicating the Kelly and Gaytan (2020) model among students taking business communication in an online environment rather than the face-to-face environment. This study will differ from Kelly and Gaytan’s (2020) study in the platform studied as well as the immediate behaviors studied, as the immediate behaviors available to online instructors are the CMII behaviors rather than nonverbal immediate behaviors.
A shortcoming of much of the instructional communication literature is that there has been an assumption that what is true about instructor communication for the face-to-face classroom is also true of the online classroom (Kelly & Westerman, 2016). Yet, this is not always the case; therefore, a replication of the Kelly and Gaytan’s (2020) study in the online classroom may reveal whether clarity and immediate behaviors are useful tools for attenuating student writing anxiety in online business communication courses or if this a phenomenon unique to the traditional, face-to-face learning environment. Accordingly, following the guidance of the IBM, it is assumed that the same direct relationships between instructor behaviors (i.e., clarity and CMII behaviors) and student beliefs (i.e., perceived immediacy) observed in Kelly and Gaytan’s (2020) study of face-to-face business communication course will be replicated online:
Once again and in alignment with the IBM, it is expected that the same direct relationship between student beliefs (perceived immediacy) and student affective learning (i.e., writing apprehension) observed in Kelly and Gaytan’s (2020) study of face-to-face business communication courses will be replicated online:
In alignment with the IBM (Weber et al., 2011) and Kelly and Gaytan’s (2020) study, these hypotheses combine to form the predicted model depicted in Figure 1. This model predicts that business communication instructor clarity and CMII behaviors will indirectly influence online students’ writing apprehension through the mediation of students’ belief about how close there are to their instructor, perceived immediacy.
Proposed model that predicts that business communication instructor clarity and CMII behaviors will indirectly influence online students’ writing apprehension through the mediation of students’ belief about how close there are to their instructor, perceived immediacy.
Method
Participants
In total, 241 business students participated in the study. They each affirmed before completing the questionnaire that they were enrolled in an online business course at their university with a large writing component at the time the questionnaire was completed. Among participants, 115 were male, 125 were female, and 1 did not disclose gender. Class rank broke down as follows: 16 freshmen, 45 sophomores, 82 juniors, 84 seniors, 13 graduate students, and 1 student chose not to disclose class rank. Average student age was 26.07 (SD = 9.01) years old.
Procedure
The authors used a snowball sampling technique, asking personal contacts among business faculty to share the link an online questionnaire hosted within Qualtrics with their students. No incentive was offered for participation, so data collection was slow, spanning the Fall 2018 through Spring 2020 semesters, with the link being emailed to potential participants each semester around midterm. Students who accessed the link were directed to an informed consent approved by the university institutional review board. Students who chose to proceed to the questionnaire after giving consent needed approximately 5 minutes to complete the questionnaire. Students were asked to indicate that they were enrolled in an online business communication course at the time in which the questionnaire link was received immediately after the informed consent. Any student who indicated that their business communication courses was completed through a different platform or in a prior semester was exited from the survey.
Instrumentation
The four instrumentation measures discussed in this section are CMII, perceived immediacy, clarity, and writing apprehension.
Computer-Mediated Instructional Immediacy
CMII behaviors were assessed through the Kelly et al. (2010) measure. It is composed of five Likert-type items with a 7-point response scale ranging from disagree strongly to agree strongly. The authors report that the measure shows evidence of content and convergent validity.
Perceived Immediacy
Kelly et al.’s (2015) measure was used to assess perceived immediacy. This semantic differential measure is composed of nine items with a 7-point response range. Kelly et al. (2015) reported that the measure displayed evidence of content and convergent validity.
Clarity
Chesebro and McCroskey’s (2001) measure was used to assess clarity. It is composed of 10 Likert-type items with a 7-point response scale that range from disagree strongly to agree strongly. Chesebro and McCroskey (2001) reported that the measure displayed evidence of convergent validity.
Writing Apprehension
Autman and Kelly’s (2017) assessment was used to measure writing apprehension. This six-item measure had a 7-point Likert-type response range with responses ranging from disagree strongly to agree strongly. The authors reported that the measure displayed evidence of both content and convergent validity.
Results
Unidimensional Measurement Models
Over time, the validation evidence of measures can change because the meaning assigned to words by new cohorts of survey takers, especially students, changes. This means that a measure that was read one way by a group of students being surveyed a few years ago, may not be read the same way by students today. Because of the evolving meaning of words, it is important not to assume that measures are valid when conducting a survey, based solely on evidence of validity at the time that a measure was published. One type of validation evidence that can be checked quickly in any survey data is the content validity of a measure, which can be assessed through a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA; Kelly & Westerman, 2020). Performing a CFA on a measure verifies whether all of the items that compose a measure are indeed working together to assess the same variable for this sample of survey takers. Therefore, to check the content validity evidence of the measures used in this study, CFAs were run on each measure before testing hypotheses to be certain that the optimal combination of items were used to assess each variable. To interpret CFA results, Bryne’s (2016) standards of fit, which are heuristic quality ranges for CFA results, indicate that a model with acceptable fit has goodness of fit index (GFI) greater than or equal to .90, comparative fit index (CFI) greater than or equal to .90, standard root mean residual (SRMR) less than or equal to .08, and root mean square error approximation (RMSEA) less than or equal to .1. Fit statistics for each measure are displayed in Table 1. Notably, though Bryne’s (2016) standards of fit expect an RMSEA greater than or equal to .1, having elevated RMSEA alone is not cause for concern because of RMSEA’s sensitivity to minor misfit, which is a product of its basis in chi square tests (Chen et al., 2008). Therefore, if GFI, CFI, and SRMR all fall within the ranges of acceptability, a measure is appropriate to be used without modification in hypothesis testing.
Fit Statistics For Each Measure.
Note. The measures of CMII behaviors and writing apprehension displayed acceptable GFI, CFI, and SRMR with only the RMSEA elevated. GFI = goodness of fit index; CFI = comparative fit index; SRMR = standard root mean residual; RMSEA = root mean square error approximation; CMII = computer-mediated instructional immediacy.
The measures of CMII behaviors and writing apprehension displayed acceptable GFI, CFI, and SRMR with only the RMSEA elevated. Therefore, the CMII behaviors and writing apprehension measures showed evidence of content validity in this sample with no problematic items. However, the clarity and perceived immediacy measures exhibited poor fit across all fit statistics. Thus, the measures were examined for items causing a statistically significant amount of residual error, which means that the measures were examined to identify which items in each measure were not collaborating with the other items in the measure among this sample. The measures were then respecified, meaning that they were subjected to CFA again after removing these problematic items. Perceived immediacy had one problematic item removed (warm/cold) and clarity had three problematic items, which were three of the four items designed to be reverse coded. Therefore, the original CMII behaviors and writing apprehension measures were used along with the respecified perceived immediacy and clarity measures hypothesis and model testing. Descriptive statistics for the finalized measures are displayed in Table 2.
Descriptive Statistics For Utilized Measures.
Note: The original CMII behaviors and writing apprehension measures were used along with the respecified perceived immediacy and clarity measures in subsequent analyses for hypothesis testing. CMII = computer-mediated instructional immediacy.
Hypothesis Testing
Each hypothesis was tested with a Pearson correlation. A correlation matrix with each variable is displayed in Table 3. Hypotheses one and two, which predicted positive relationships between CMII behaviors and clarity with perceived immediacy, respectively, were supported. However, hypothesis three, which predicted a negative relationship between perceived immediacy and writing apprehension, was not supported.
Correlation Matrix With Each Variable.
Note. Hypotheses 1 and 2, which predicted positive relationships between CMII behaviors and clarity with perceived immediacy, respectively, were supported.
p < .05.
Model Test
In the proposed model, a negative relationship between perceived immediacy and writing apprehension is predicted. This relationship was shown to not exist through hypothesis testing though. Therefore, already, the proposed model is expected to be unsupported by the data because hypothesis three, a path in the proposed model, was not supported during hypothesis testing. The model was tested through structural equation modeling with indirect effects confirmed through bootstrapping 10,000 subsamples of 200 with a confidence interval of 95%. Testing indirect effects through bootstrapped samples is important when direct effects are within sampling error of zero (i.e., nonstatistically significant effects), as is the case with Hypothesis 3. As such, the global fit statistics for the observed model were acceptable (GFI = .99, CFI = .99, RMSEA = .07, SRMR = .03), but this fit is only found because of the null effect of Hypothesis 3. Bootstrapping samples to test the indirect effects revealed that the indirect effects were not statistically significant, indicating that the data were inconsistent with the overall predicted model, with no evidence that the teacher behaviors influenced writing apprehension in this sample. More specifically, confidence intervals for the indirect effects were as follows: clarity to writing apprehension (−.07 < ρ < .06) and CMII to writing apprehension (−.09 < ρ < .08). This means that the global fit statistics were likely inflated because of these statistically insignificant indirect effects.
Therefore, the data showed no evidence that in the online business communication classroom, instructor CMII behaviors or clarity influence students’ writing apprehension. In summary, while we found that certain instructional CMII and clarity behaviors do support perceived immediacy, these behaviors do not apparently help with writing apprehension in online instruction. Perceived immediacy is important in the online classroom. Therefore, business instructors still need to engage in CMII and clarity. However, the CMII and clarity behaviors that increase perceived immediacy do not apparently help with writing apprehension in online courses like they do in face-to-face courses. Ultimately, business instructors need to look for other interventions that may assist them in better responding to student writing apprehension in online courses
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to test the assumption that instructor immediate behaviors and clarity would act as an intervention for writing anxiety among distance learners, as was previously observed in face-to-face learners. The findings of this study indicate that CMII behaviors and clarity may not be interventions for writing apprehension. As such, professors may not be able to rely on these instructional behaviors to assist their distance learners with writing apprehension.
The present study provides a comparison with the Kelly and Gaytan (2020) writing apprehension model, which indicated that instructor nonverbal immediate behaviors and clarity served as an intervention for writing apprehension among face-to-face learners in business communication courses. Similar to the Kelly and Gaytan (2020) study, this study found moderate to strong correlations between instructors’ immediate behaviors, clarity, and perceived immediacy. Yet the small to moderate correlation between perceived immediacy and writing apprehension observed in the Kelly and Gaytan (2020) study was not observed in the present study, causing the predicted model to misfit the data. In fact, in the Kelly and Gaytan (2020) study, statistically significant correlations were identified between writing apprehension and all other variables in the model. The present study yielded opposite results, as writing apprehension was not statistically significantly related to any of the instructor behaviors or perception variables in the online classroom. Therefore, unlike Kelly and Gaytan’s (2020) study of the face-to-face business communication classroom, the present study found that online instructor immediate behaviors and clarity did not influence students’ writing apprehension.
There are two possible explanations for these findings. The first is that business communication instructors are not having an influence on students’ writing apprehension through clarity and CMII behaviors because online students have a better handle on their own writing apprehension than face-to-face students and do not need their instructor’s help mitigating their anxiety. This explanation has a foundation in the fact that the mean writing apprehension score for this sample was, after all, below neutral (3.16/7.00). It could be that the online learning environment, which allow students to tackle their writing assignments when they are ready, is simply less stressful than face-to-face classrooms when writing assignments must happen at an appointed time and are often timed to fit the constraints of the class.
The second possibility is that instructor communicative behaviors are not the best intervention for writing apprehension in the online business communication classroom. If the instructor communicative behaviors were the only variables not statistically significantly related to writing apprehension among distance learners, there would be hope that other instructional communicative behaviors could be discovered, which will serve as an inoculation for students’ writing apprehension. However, this was not the case in this study. The relationship between perceived immediacy and writing apprehension was not statistically significant. Perceived immediacy is a student’s psychological response to all instructor communicative behaviors, including those not examined in the current study such as instructor misbehaviors (Kelly & Westerman, 2016). Because there was not a statistically significant relationship between students’ perceived immediacy with their instructor and their writing apprehension, the present data suggest that no instructor communicative behaviors influence students’ writing apprehension in the online classroom.
Implications for Educators
If business communication instructors cannot rely on their communicative skills to help students overcome their writing apprehension, instructors must look to other outlets. The IBM (Weber et al., 2011) demonstrates that the three typologies of variables that have the potential to influence student learning outcomes, such as writing apprehension, are instructor behaviors, student characteristics, and classroom characteristics. Although instructors cannot control the characteristics students bring to the classroom at the beginning of the semester, instructors can control their own communicative behaviors and alter classroom characteristics, such as those policies contained in the syllabus (Weber et al., 2011). Thus, the present study indicates that instructor behaviors cannot be relied on to assist with writing apprehension for distance learners. As such, business communication instructors must focus on refining the other variables they are in control of, such as classroom characteristics, to assist online learners. Classroom characteristic variables include course structures, such as the detail of grading rubrics, the availability of instructors to provide feedback on assignments before submission, and the transparency of grading (c.f., Weber et al., 2011). As a concrete example, a business communication instructor should develop a rubric to assess a writing assignment. This rubric must be included in the course syllabus to ensure students know the criteria being used to assess their writing assignments. Allowing students to submit their work before the due date to receive feedback may reduce students’ writing apprehension because students know that they will have an opportunity to incorporate the feedback into the final writing product.
The results of this study, however, do not in any way indicate that CMII behaviors and clarity are unimportant. There were still substantial correlations between both CMII behaviors and clarity with respect to perceived immediacy. The results of this study only indicate that instructor CMII behaviors and clarity are not an inoculation for writing apprehension among online learners, not that these variables are unimportant for student success. Developing perceived immediacy with students is still critical to ensure that students are comfortable asking questions and have high affective learning for course material (Kelly, Drye, & Williams, 2018; Kelly & Westerman, 2016).
It is noteworthy that 53% of the variance in business communication instructor’s CMII behaviors was accounted for by clarity and vice versa (r2 = 53.3). Engaging in CMII behaviors requires online instructors to devote extra time and thought to communicating with their online students versus their face-to-face students (Christen et al., 2015; Fall et al., 2011; Kelly & Fall, 2011). As such, it is not surprising that the instructors investing this extra thought and time into the way they communicate with their online students are also substantively more likely to be perceived as clear communicators. Because of this, instructors not regularly engaged in CMII behaviors (e.g., addressing students by their name, signing each message rather than relying on a signature block, referring to activities as what “we” vs. “you” will be doing) should take the time to consider their communicative practices in their online courses and evaluate whether their strategic communication decisions have been motivated by saving time or communicating effectively with their students. Asking online students to anonymously fill out the CMII measure (Kelly et al., 2010) for their online instructor at midterm can help instructors identify whether they are truly connecting with their online students as well as they believe they are, and to provide direction for how to improve that connection.
Implications for Future Research
This study found that the Kelly and Gaytan (2020) model was moderated by learning channel and reiterated the importance of replication work. As contextual variables surrounding relationships change, the relationships between variables also change (Croucher & Kelly et al., 2020; McEwan, 2020; McEwan et al., 2018; Violanti et al., 2018). For business communication research, this finding means that readers should not assume that the same phenomenon occurs across instructional platforms nor remains true across generations of students.
These findings demonstrate a need for researchers to find inoculations for students’ writing apprehension. Because instructor behaviors seem to be uninfluential in this context, future research is needed to identify the way classroom characteristics can be altered by business communication faculty to assist distance learners in positively responding to their writing apprehension. Researchers may also find that there are certain characteristics that students bring to the classroom at the beginning of the semester that contribute to their writing apprehension and could be further developed by instructors to ultimately assist with their anxiety, even if it means faculty influencing variables such as students’ self-esteem or motivation through out-of-class communication (Johnson & Kelly, 2020). At present, more research is needed to determine the effectiveness of CMII instructor behaviors and clarity in mitigating writing apprehension.
Limitations
This study had a number of limitations. First, data collection began before COVID-19 affected the United States, but ended after the outbreak; thus, this study cannot make conclusions specific to the COVID-19 classroom environments. Second, two of the measures did yield elevated RMSEA, which may have created minor measurement noise in testing the relationships between variables. Third, convenience sampling was used to collect data, resulting in a nonrandom sample.
Conclusions
Counter to expectations, this study did not find instructor clarity or CMII behaviors to be effective interventions for writing anxiety among online business communication students. This finding is in direct contradiction to what has been observed in the face-to-face classroom (Kelly & Gaytan, 2020). Now more than ever, as COVID-19 has forced instructors to convert face-to-face courses to their online counterparts, it is critical that educators and researchers search for new interventions to address students’ writing apprehension, which will assist online business communication students in the classroom now and later in their careers.
Footnotes
Author’s Note
This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of North Carolina A&T State University (Approval No. 17-0004).
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
