Student-teacher interaction in online synchronous learning environment: A cultural perspective

Student-teacher interaction is one of the proxy factors for students' motivation, academic achievement, engagement and retention. Student-teacher interaction varies with respect to different socio-cultural backgrounds and it is prominent to reveal how this interaction manifests within different cultural niches. From this point of view, this study aimed at investigating student-teacher interaction in online synchronous learning environment through power distance (Hofstede, 1983) and high – low context (Hall, 1976) cultural dimensions. The study underpinned case study approach in which quantitative and qualitative data were collected simultaneously. The cross-sectional method was used for the quantitative, and content analysis was used for the qualitative approach. The statistical analysis were carried out with data collected from 158 students. Descriptive statistics and paired sample t-test was used to analyze the quantitative data, and deductive descriptive qualitative content analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data. The results show that high context communication tendencies was greater than low context, and the difference was statistically significant. This finding implies that participants value eye contact, proxemics or body language as student-teacher interaction occurs. Due to high context tendencies, the majority of the participants stated that the teacher is recognized more authoritarian in face-to-face classroom environment. The number of participants seeing teacher as an authority figure in online synchronous learning environment was quiet low. The number of participants expressing their ideas more comfortably in face-to-face brick and mortar environment due to the availability of high context communication factors is greater than online synchronous learning environment. However, there is an increase in the number of participants expressing their ideas more comfortably in online synchronous learning environment. The reason that there is an increase in the number of participants expressing their ideas more comfortably in online synchronous learning environment might be attributed to lessened power asymmetries in this learning environment. The results of the study is important to align student-teacher interaction in online synchronous learning environment with respect to cultural backgrounds.