Graduation Term

2024

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

School of Teaching and Learning

Committee Chair

Anna Smith

Committee Member

John Hooker

Abstract

Rapport developed between teachers and students in a typical classroom setting can provide students with a more positive school experience, an increase in learning and performance, and added feelings of social belonging (Cook, et al., 2018). Online learning is associated with many advantages like a more comfortable setting for students to participate (Majewska & Zvobgo, 2023), but also includes disadvantages like feelings of isolation (Phirangee & Malec, 2020) which can result in rapport being more difficult to develop. Established rapport during online educational settings can yield a multitude of positive outcomes for online students and teachers alike. These outcomes include but are not limited to increasing academic performance and experiences for students, as well as improving perceived job quality for teachers. Unfortunately, due to the barriers associated with asynchronous learning specifically, like lessened nonverbal cues and other communication barriers, rapport-building becomes more difficult for educators to nurture. A mixed methods approach was utilized to explore the features and limitations of perceived rapport-building during online courses. The findings of this study determined that students’ perception of rapport is similar for students participating in asynchronous and synchronous courses. Also, findings suggest asynchronous teachers could attempt to utilize a combination of teacher responsiveness (i.e. responding quickly to emails) and humor (i.e. telling funny jokes) because students perceive those concepts as most conducive to developing teacher-student rapport during asynchronous instruction. It was also found that synchronous online instructors should address a combination of teacher responsiveness and social presence (being perceived as human in an online setting) because students perceive these concepts as most beneficial towards rapport-building during synchronous online instruction. Results of this study provide implications for how students perceive teacher-student rapport during online settings, and findings indicate students do not perceive significant rapport developed with their online instructors. Findings related to which indicators of rapport students perceive as most effective towards developing effective rapport were also found, which can have practical implications for how online courses are developed and facilitated moving forward. The above-mentioned combination of teacher actions (asynchronous: teacher responsiveness and humor; synchronous: teacher responsiveness and social presence) can be utilized more deliberately by teachers to develop quality rapport with their online students, which should lead to the benefits associated with quality teacher-student rapport.

Access Type

Dissertation-Open Access

DOI

https://doi.org/10.30707/ETD2024.20240827063556923392.999987

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