Interactivity in Distance Learning: The Digital Divide and Student Satisfaction

Like any other complex communications infrastructure, the network connecting different locations of virtual classes in university systems has developed over time with differing combinations of synchronous and asynchronous communication technologies at the various university locations. This research focuses on graduate nursing students’ satisfaction with the learning experience in seven distinct virtual classes during the 1998-99 academic year of a midwestern state university system. Each virtual class included course offerings from multiple campuses at eight locations, two urban and six non-urban. Differences between student perceptions of satisfaction for host and remote sites are analyzed, as well as differences between students at urban sites and non-urban sites whether remote or host. When geographic location is controlled, separating the data into urban and non-urban settings, students attending classes with a web requirement in urban settings were more likely to express positive degrees of satisfaction than students attending classes with a web requirement in non-urban settings. The relationship holds for both host and remote classes.