Transactional distance and interactive television in the distance education of health professionals

Abstract

Distance education, in which learners are remote from the primary educational institution and the teacher, is increasingly delivered via interactive television technology. Moore (1980) described transactional distance between students and faculty in distance education as characterized by dialogue and structure. He hypothesized that high structure and low dialogue yield “remote” transactional distance and low structure and high dialogue yield “close” transactional distance. The variables in the current study were operationally defined following Moore (1973, 665): “A learner's ‘distance’ from his teacher [transactional distance] … is defined as a function of individualization [structure] and dialogue.” Student volunteers (n = 221) in thirteen public health and nursing graduate courses at the University of Hawaii at Manoa responded to an investigator‐developed questionnaire regarding elements of dialogue, structure, and transactional distance in their courses. Principal components and internal consistency reliability analyses verified the presence of three factors: structure, dialogue, and transactional distance. Dialogue was greater in the distance‐format courses than in the traditional‐format courses. Distance‐format courses did not differ from traditional courses on amount of structure or transactional distance.