This study investigated the effects of gender and levels of low, medium, and high perceived interaction about content, among peers, and with instructors on the combined measures of learner motivation, sense of community, socialization, instructor role, and learner role in asynchronous online learning settings. Online survey via systematic sampling was sent to a large public Midwestern university by an email invitation (N = 6,200). Participants were 143 females, 58.60%, and 101 males, 41.40% (n = 244).
Five identified outliers, when deleted, resulted in 239 for further analysis. MANOVA results indicated that gender and learner perceived interaction significantly affected the combined outcome measures. ANOVA results indicated that learner motivation significantly differed for gender and learner perceived interaction. Sense of community significantly differed for learner perceived interaction. There was a significant disordinant interaction effect between the level of perceived interaction and the gender of the person perceiving interaction on sense of community. Instructor role significantly differed for gender. Learner role significantly differed for learner perceived interaction.
Scheffé post hoc results indicated that low-leveled perceived interaction group significantly differed from high-leveled perceived interaction group; medium-leveled perceived interaction group significantly differed from high-leveled perceived interaction group; and high-leveled perceived interaction group significantly differed from both low- and medium-leveled perceived interaction groups regarding learner motivation, sense of community, and learner role.
Examination of adjusted means indicated that high-leveled perceived interaction group, overall, had higher adjusted mean differences than both low- and medium-leveled perceived interaction groups. Learner role had the highest adjusted mean differences between high- and low-leveled perceived interaction groups. Female students had the highest adjusted mean differences in instructor role in comparison with their male counterparts. By examining means across levels of low, medium, and high perceived interaction group by gender, overall, female students had a higher rating in means than male students for learner motivation, sense of community, instructor role, and learner role.
Implications of the study were discussed and recommendations for future study were presented.