Transactional distance and student motivation: Student perception of teacher immediacy, solidarity toward peer students and student motivation in distance education

Transactional Distance Theory is conceptually significant in that the core nature of distance in distance education is not a geographical or temporal distance but a psychological or communicational distance between students and their teacher(s), as well as among students. In spite of the conceptual significance of the transactional distance theory, the interrelationships among the construct variables and propositions of the theory are unclear. The majority of studies on transactional distance theory either used the theory solely as a conceptual framework, or proposed the refinement of the theory. Literature review indicated that the theory was found to be invalid and unreliable. No measurements have been consistently used to measure transactional distance.;This study focused on the conceptual significance of transactional theory through the use of concepts and measurements from Communication Studies. This study made an effort to investigate Moore\u27s theory of transactional distance with the concepts of \u27immediacy\u27 and \u27solidarity,\u27 which are often used in the field of Communication Studies. The operational definition of transactional distance between teacher and students (TDST) is students\u27 perception of teachers\u27 immediacy behavior and that of transactional distance among students (TDSS) is students\u27 perception of the learner.;By providing a measurable communication variable as operational definition of transactional distance, this study showed the potential of transactional distance as a measurable variable in a theory. This study sampled seventy-nine Executive Master\u27s of Business Administration (EMBA) students in videoconferencing classrooms. The findings indicated that offsite students who do not have their instructor in their classroom developed higher solidarity toward their classmates in the same site than onsite students whose instructors were present in their classroom. No significant association was found between student motivation and student perception of psychological distance toward their instructor or toward their classmates