Rapport Presentation

1. Creation of a Professor-Student
Rapport Measure for Online
Teaching
D'Arcy Reynolds, Ph.D.
Southeast Missouri State University
17th Annual Conference on Teaching
Friday, October 19, 2018

2. Overview
What is Professor-Student Rapport?
Why Investigate Rapport?
What is Online Learning?
Why Investigate Online Teaching?
Why Online Teaching Rapport?
What did I Investigate?
What Did I Do?
What Did I Find?
What Does it Mean?
Limitations of Findings
Ideas for Future Study?

3. What is Professor-Student Rapport?
Professor-Student Rapport refers to:
– overall positive relationship between
instructors & their students
• “relationship of mutual trust & liking” (1)
Note. 1 - Wilson et al. (2010)

4. Why Investigate Rapport?
One of the three most crucial
components of online teaching (2)
– strong association with positive student
outcomes like studying more, learning
more, & higher course grade (3,4,5)
Despite its importance, little is
known about rapport in education &
esp. in online teaching (6)
Note. 2 - Wilson et al. (2010); 3 - Benson et al. (2005); 4 - Wilson et al. (2011); 5 - Wilson & Ryan (2013); 6 – Frisby & Martin (2010)

5. What is Online Learning?
Courses can vary by interaction mode
& delivery (7,8)
– 1) simultaneous (synchronous)
• e.g., face-to-face – live at particular location
• e.g., ITV - live at a distance
– 2) time-delayed (asynchronous)
• e.g., fully online – LMS* heavily used
– 3) hybrid (synchronous + asynchronous)
• e.g., blended – mix of f2f/ITV and online
Note. 7 – Mason Online (2018); 8 – NWIC Curriculum Committee (2015); * learning management system

6. Why Investigate Online Teaching?
1/3 higher education students take at
least one online class
– nearly 70% of higher education
institutions report online education is
critical to their long-term strategy (9)
Note. 9 - Allen & Seaman (2014)

7. Why Online Teaching Rapport?
The academic administration need
Significantly fewer students persist in
online courses (10)
– 1/4 dropouts due to lack of student
relatedness & feelings of connectivity (11)
High attrition problematic b/c U.S.
states allocating funding based on
course completion & time to degree (12)
Note. 10 – Tello (2007); 11 - Nistor & Neubauer (2010); 12 - National Conference of State Legislatures (2015)

8. Why Online Teaching Rapport?
The empirical need
Given online courses offer little
chance for f2f interactions, it can be
challenging to establish rapport (13)
– this is main criticism of online courses (14,15)
Thus, recent studies have stated need
for more research to examine the role
of rapport in online courses (16,17,18)
Note. 13 - Lammers & Gillaspy (2013); 14 - Allen, Seaman, Lederman, & Jaschik (2012); 15 - Sher (2009); 16 - Murphy et al. (2012); 17 -
Wilson, Wilson, & Legg (2012); 18 - Wilson & Ryan (2013)

9. Why Online Teaching Rapport?
The empirical (cont...)
Helpful to create a sound measure to
indentify specific aspects of teaching
that need improvement
– e.g., midterm assessment would allow
teachers to adjust their behaviors &
enhance student rapport (19)
Only few attempts to measure rapport
been made in f2f teaching & only one
attempt in online teaching
Note. 19 - Wilson & Ryan (2013)

10. Why Online Teaching Rapport?
The empirical (cont...)
Janie Wilson over 3 studies examined
rapport measure in f2f teaching
– in 1st study, created 34 item measure w/
strong internal consistency & some
evidence of convergent validity (20)
– in 2nd study, provided further evidence of
reliability (test-retest & internal
consistency) & validity (construct) (21)
– in 3rd study, reduced measure to 15 items
which clustered into the two components
of caring (9 items) & engaging (6 items)
Note. 20 – Wilson et al. (2010); 21 – Ryan et al. (2011); 22 – Wilson & Ryan (2013)

11. Why Online Teaching Rapport?
The empirical (cont...)
Bill Lammers developed a brief (9 item)
rapport measure for both f2f teaching
(1st) & online teaching (2nd)
– in 1st study, provided evidence of reliability
(internal consistency) and validity
(predictive*) (23)
– in 2nd study, extended reliability (internal
consistency) & validity (concurrent &
predictive*) to different modality (24)
Note. 23 – Lammers et al. (2017); 24 – Lammers & Gillaspy (2013); * higher perceived rapport related to higher final grades

12. What did I Investigate?
Development of a psychometrically
sound measure of rapport in online
teaching from student’s perspective

13. What Did I Do?
67/354 undergrads took part in either
(1) item generation or (2) professor
rating phase & completed:
– (1) Rapport Definition Survey
• up to 5 open ended responses
– (2) Professor-Student Rapport Measure
• 39-item Likert-type scale (0 = SD to 4 = SA)

14. What Did I Find?
Analysis consisted of:
– multiple imputation for missing data (25)
• 20 imputed datasets generated
– exploratory bifactor analyses (26)
• 13 items loaded on general factor & 4
subfactors
– bifactor confirmatory analyses
• model produced a strong fit for the data
Note. 25 – Enders (2010); 26 – Reise (2012)

17. What Did (cont...)
Reliability and Validity of Analysis:
– latent variable modeling reliability (27)
• ranged from .55 (profess.) to .94 (general)
– SEM convergent & divergent validity
• correlations for latent total score w/ external
ratings of excellent teacher (.62***),
expected grade (-.14**), & actual grade (.064)
Note. 27 – Raykov (2004); ** p < .01; ** p < .001

18. What Does it Mean?
13 item rapport measure is adequately
reliable & valid & consists of …
– general factor & four subfactors of
flexibility, professionalism, ease of
communication, & shared expectations
measure not (or weak) predictor of
actual (estimated) final grade in
contrast to previous studies
– other rapport measures predicted higher
self-reported grades & actual grades (28+29+30)
Note. 28 - Wilson & Ryan (2013); 29 – Wilson et al. (2010); 30 - Lammers & Gillaspy (2013)

19. Limitations of Findings
Three issues:
– 1) homogeneous participants ->
findings may not be pertinent to more
diverse populations
– 2) ease of communication & especially
professionalism subfactors had poor
reliability
– 3) student provided reports of rapport
near end of course, so these ratings
may be influenced by their current grade

20. Ideas for Future Study?
Rapport comparisons between f2f,
hybrid, & online courses
– differences in item’s relative strength and
clustering into factors?
Briefer measure to reduce cognitive
load & encourage thoughtful completion
Experimentally determine whether items
from the few existing rapport measures
more important than others

21. Creation of a Professor-Student
Rapport Measure for Online
Teaching
Thank you for listening
dreynolds@semo.edu

22. Acknowledgements
Co-Author:
– Eugene Chin, Ph.D.
• Southeast Missouri State University
Collaborators:
– Floyd Lockhart
• Southeast Missouri State University
– Janie Wilson, Ph.D.
• Georgia Southern University