JOURNAL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS EDUCATION - naspaa

Staying Connected: MPA Student Perceptions of Transactional Presence
the average for the university as a whole (38 percent), and the MPA program in
particular (65 percent). Respondents also tended to be between the ages of 26
and 30 (29.4 percent), with approximately 81 percent at age 40 or below, which
is representative of the MPA program.
STUDENT-STUDENT TRANSACTIONAL PRESENCE
Fulford and Zhang (1993) indicated that there were two important
dimensions of interaction in the distance-learning environment. One is the
personal interaction that a student has with the professor. However, they found
that an equally important level of interaction is overall classroom interaction,
which includes interaction with peers. Most of the MPA students responding to
the survey had some contact with their peers (84.7 percent), with 50.5 percent
reporting that they had this contact at least once per week. Students who had
taken both traditional and online classes were then asked a follow-up question to
compare the amount of contact in both formats. When questioned on whether
the amount of contact with peers was different than that for a traditional class,
more than 57 percent indicated that the amount of peer contact was either
somewhat less or much less than they had experienced in traditional classes.
However, the amount of contact is not necessarily highly correlated with the
value of contact. In regards to students’ satisfaction with the contact they had
with their classmates, most students reported that they were either somewhat
(25.3 percent) or very satisfied (32.2 percent) with the contact they had with
their peers. However, a large proportion (31 percent) also indicated that they
were neutral concerning the contact that they had with their peers.
Next, a hypothesis concerning satisfaction with student-student transactional
presence was tested. To test the hypotheses that women and minority students
may have different needs for “connectedness,” or preferences for communal
learning styles, a series of Chi-Square analyses were conducted. Although the
Chi-Square analysis of the relationship between gender and satisfaction with
peer contact did not yield a statistically significant result (p = 0.217), there is
some evidence that the women surveyed were less satisfied with the studentstudent
transactional presence than the men were in online courses. As shown in
Table 1, men were more likely to be very satisfied (37.5 percent) with the
contact they had with classmates, while women only expressed high degrees of
satisfaction 29 percent of the time. Conversely, women were more likely to
indicate that they were either not very satisfied or not at all satisfied (14.5
percent), when compared to the men (6.3 percent). (See Table 1.)
Part of the reason for this finding may stem from the motivation for using an
online format. Analysis of the reasons why students took their first online class
indicates that women were much more likely to see the online class as a
Journal of Public Affairs Education 323