Seeing through the eyes of a teacher: differences in perceptions of HE teaching in face-to-face and digital contexts

Abstract

Studies of how contextual factors influence teachers’ approaches to teaching have chiefly focused on face-to-face teaching in physical campus contexts. This study advances understanding of how applicable this knowledge is in digital contexts. The study explores how university teachers perceive the differences between teaching in physical campus contexts and the digital teaching contexts found in online courses. Interview data were collected from 15 university teachers and analysed using thematic analysis. The results show that respondents perceived digital teaching contexts to be changeable. Changes were attributed to technology development and influences from students and teachers. The respondents varied in how close or anonymous they perceived their online students to be compared to their campus students. The variation was related to the type of teaching-learning activities prioritised by the respondents. However, no relationships were found between respondents’ perceptions of their student-teacher relationship and class size, time invested, or type of communication.

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Studies in Higher Education
ISSN: 0307-5079 (Print) 1470-174X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cshe20
Seeing through the eyes of a teacher: differences
in perceptions of HE teaching in face-to-face and
digital contexts
Lise Jensen, Linda Price & Torgny Roxå
To cite this article: Lise Jensen, Linda Price & Torgny Roxå (2019): Seeing through the eyes of
a teacher: differences in perceptions of HE teaching in face-to-face and digital contexts, Studies in
Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/03075079.2019.1688280
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1688280
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Group
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Seeing through the eyes of a teacher: differences in perceptions of
HE teaching in face-to-face and digital contexts
Lise Jensen
a
, Linda Price
b
and Torgny Roxå
a
a
Faculty of Engineering LTH, Lund University, Lund, Sweden;
b
Centre for Learning Excellence, University of
Bedforshire, Luton, UK
ABSTRACT
Studies of how contextual factors influence teachers’approaches to
teaching have chiefly focused on face-to-face teaching in physical
campus contexts. This study advances understanding of how applicable
this knowledge is in digital contexts. The study explores how university
teachers perceive the differences between teaching in physical campus
contexts and the digital teaching contexts found in online courses.
Interview data were collected from 15 university teachers and analysed
using thematic analysis. The results show that respondents perceived
digital teaching contexts to be changeable. Changes were attributed to
technology development and influences from students and teachers.
The respondents varied in how close or anonymous they perceived their
online students to be compared to their campus students. The variation
was related to the type of teaching-learning activities prioritised by the
respondents. However, no relationships were found between
respondents’perceptions of their student-teacher relationship and class
size, time invested, or type of communication.
KEYWORDS
Higher education; teaching
methods; technology uses in
education; teacher student
relationship; context effect
Introduction
Research has shown that how teachers perceive the teaching context can influence their intentions
and how they approach their teaching (Lindblom-Ylänne et al. 2006; Norton et al. 2005; Prosser et al.
2003; Prosser and Trigwell 1997; Ramsden et al. 2007) and that this is significant for student learning
(Gow and Kember 1993; Trigwell, Prosser, and Waterhouse 1999). However, most of this research has
been conducted in face-to-face settings. When university courses move from the well-instantiated
campus context to a different one –such as the digital teaching context found in online courses –
it is important to understand how this new context influences teachers and their teaching.
Teaching in face-to-face contexts provides different affordances compared to teaching in digital
contexts. University buildings, lecture halls, classrooms and laboratories have framed and supported
higher education for many years. However, digital technologies now play a key role in reshaping how
higher education is being delivered. Most European higher education institutions consider online
learning in their governance approach (Sursock 2015) and likewise find that this changes teachers’
approaches to teaching and learning (Gaebel 2015). The number of students enrolled in online edu-
cation continues to grow; more than 6 million are now enrolled in higher education distance courses
in the United States (Allen and Seaman 2017). This move to deliver teaching and learning online pre-
sents a significant change in teaching context. So how does this change in context affect teachers’
© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://
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original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
CONTACT Lise Jensen lise.jensen@design.lth.se Lunds Tekniska Högskola, LTH, Box 118, 221 00 Lund, Sweden
STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION
https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1688280

perceptions of their teaching? This study examines this question by exploring how teachers’percep-
tions of teaching in a digital context differ from their perceptions of teaching in a physical context.
This was done using telephone interviews with 15 teachers across six intuitions.
Previous research
Teachers’approaches to teaching
One way to examine the impact of changes in teaching context is to examine changes in teachers’
approaches to teaching. Approaches to teaching are often divided into two qualitatively different cat-
egories: a student-learning approach and a teacher-content approach (Gow and Kember 1993; Trig-
well and Prosser 2004). A student-learning approach to teaching is associated with students applying
a deep approach to learning. This results in qualitatively better learning. Comparatively, a teacher-
content approach to teaching is associated with students applying a surface approach to learning.
This results in more shallow and transient learning (Gow and Kember 1993; Sheppard and Gilbert
1991; Trigwell, Prosser, and Waterhouse 1999). It is important to understand how teachers approach
their teaching, as studies have shown a strong relationship between how teachers approach their
teaching and how students approach their learning (Trigwell, Prosser, and Waterhouse 1999).
Influential factors in physical campus contexts
Trigwell and Prosser (2004) found that teachers’approaches to teaching are influenced by intrinsic
and extrinsic factors. Pedagogical beliefs and perceptions of teaching/learning are the intrinsic
factors that motivate teachers to approach their teaching in a certain way. However, how teachers
translate their pedagogical beliefs into actual teaching is influenced by a number of extrinsic
factors, such as characteristics of the context. Prosser and Trigwell (1997) explored how extrinsic
factors influence teachers’approaches to teaching in a physical campus context. Their study ident-
ified a number of influential contextual factors, covering areas that include teachers’working situ-
ation, student-teacher interaction and student characteristics. Their findings demonstrated a
systematic link between contextual factors and teachers’approaches to teaching. In particular,
they found that a transformative student-learning approach is sensitive to variation in contextual
factors. In other words, if the teaching context is not favourable, teachers with a student-learning
approach to teaching may resort to a more teacher-content approach.
A slightly different view is presented by Kember and Kwan (2000). They argue that teachers’
approaches to teaching are determined primarily by their orientations, that is, their underlying
beliefs about teaching, which are more stable than the contextual factors per se. They formulated
a list of contextual factors that influence how teachers approach their teaching. Their list partially
overlaps with Prosser and Trigwell’s. However, Kember and Kwan specifically mention, ‘Teaching
rooms which are not conducive to the type of teaching preferred by a lecturer’(2000, 487).
Postareffand Lindblom-Ylänne (2008) focus on social interaction and provide an overarching descrip-
tion of teaching contexts, which includes the teachers’role, students’role, interaction, and atmos-
phere. Unlike Kember and Kwan, they do not place intrinsic and extrinsic factors in a hierarchical
relationship but instead place teachers’beliefs and contextual factors on the same level.
Despite differences in nuances, the overall picture is in agreement as to how characteristics of the
physical campus context are linked to teachers’approaches to teaching. The focus of Postareffand
Lindblom-Ylänne on social interactions highlights the importance of student-teacher interaction, one
of the areas defined by Trigwell and Prosser, while Kember and Kwan’s attention to the importance of
physical space adds to Trigwell and Prosser’s inventory. Seen together, these studies identify four
areas of contextual factors: teachers’working situation, student-teacher interaction, student character-
istics, and affordances of environment. These four have the potential to influence how teachers
approach teaching in a physical campus context.
2L. JENSEN ET AL.

Extrinsic factors in digital teaching contexts
Studies of extrinsic factors in digital teaching contexts and how they influence teachers’experiences,
practices and approaches to teaching are limited in number. However, Gonzalez (2009) investigated
three such contextual factors: student characteristics,institutional influence and curriculum and subject.
Gonzalez found that student characteristics and institutional influence had a direct impact on how tea-
chers approach their teaching, while curriculum and subject only had an indirect influence. Addition-
ally, Badia, Garcia, and Meneses (2016) found that time invested in teaching is related to teachers’
approaches to teaching.
A slightly different focus is found in studies conducted in teaching contexts where online activities
are combined with face-to-face activities on campus (blended learning). From this perspective a
special concern has been to explore how contextual factors support or inhibit technology use (Blin
and Munro 2008; Ginns and Ellis 2007; Ottenbreit-Leftwich et al. 2010; Schoonenboom 2014; Stein,
Shephard, and Harris 2011). Teachers’preferred use of technology is generally described as a position
on an continuum ranging from information transfer to collaborative, activity-oriented use (González
2013; Kanuka and Rourke 2013; Khan and Markauskaite 2017; Lameras et al. 2012). The influential
factors identified include institutional culture, peer support, resources and usability issues.
The contextual factors examined in these studies all belong to the four areas established in studies
conducted in physical campus contexts (teachers’working situation, student-teacher interaction,
student characteristics, and affordances of environment). The studies demonstrate that extrinsic
factors influence teachers’teaching practices and approaches to teaching in digital contexts as
well as in physical campus contexts. Focusing on teachers’transition from a physical campus
context to a digital one, Englund, Olofsson, and Price (2017) found that teachers’approaches to
teaching with technology are related to their approaches to teaching. Scott (2016) gained further
insights into the relationships between teachers’beliefs and practices in physical and digital teaching
contexts by tracking the developmental paths of six teachers through the transition from campus
teaching to online teaching in a two-year longitudinal study. The study demonstrated that the
relationships between teachers’e-learning beliefs and practices are interactive and multi-directional.
Although certain sets of beliefs may remain constant over a number of different contexts, different
contexts may influence teachers to activate different beliefs resulting in different practices.
Seen together, these studies demonstrate the influence contextual factors have on teachers’
beliefs, approaches and practices. They also make apparent that in order to understand the interplay
between specific teaching contexts and how teachers go about their teaching, we need to under-
stand how the characteristics differ between different teaching contexts. What remains unclear is
how teachers’perceptions of teaching in the digital context found in online courses differ from
their perceptions of teaching in a physical campus context. The study presented here investigates
this. It advances the understanding of how different teaching contexts influence teachers’percep-
tions of their teaching.
Method
The present study explored how 15 university teachers perceived the differences between teaching
online and on campus. The study was based on data collected from interviews in which the respon-
dents used their own experiences from campus teaching as a baseline for describing what it was like
to teach online.
The respondents were recruited from six Swedish universities through a non-random, purposive
sampling method (Cohen, Manion, and Morrison 2011, 156). Accordingly, the respondents were not
selected randomly, rather a specific group was targeted based on particular characteristics. A reputa-
tional sampling strategy (Cohen, Manion, and Morrison 2011, 157) was adopted, where six technical
faculties were contacted and asked to recommend respondents. Respondents were selected based
on three criteria: They had extended experience of online teaching, they taught courses with a
STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION 3

significant amount of teacher-led activities, and they were the main teacher of their course (the term
‘teacher’is used here in the European tradition; for North American readers, the term ‘college faculty’
applies). The rationale behind the selection criteria was an ambition to find respondents who had
matured in their roles as teachers and had been able to adjust their teaching approaches to an
online context. At the same time, respondents were to be involved in day-to-day teaching and
have regular interaction with their students throughout the course.
All respondents in the sample taught university undergraduate courses and were responsible for
the design of their courses. They were also responsible for planning and implementing teaching-
learning activities such as lectures, exercises, seminars, discussions and exams. The size of online
classes taught by the respondents varied from 10 to 100 students. All respondents had experience
of similar class sizes when teaching on campus. They were encouraged to use their experience of
comparable campus classes as a baseline when comparing their online and campus experiences.
An overview of the respondents’experience of teaching online and their subject area is presented
in Table 1.
Prosser and Trigwell’sPerceptions of the Teaching Environment Inventory (1997) served to frame the
data collection and directly informed both the structure and content of the interview protocol. The
semi-structured interviews were based on an interview protocol divided into six sections. Five sec-
tions were based on Prosser and Trigwell’s identification of contextual factors that influence teachers’
approaches to teaching (Prosser and Trigwell 1997). The sixth section was informed by Trigwell and
Prosser’sApproaches to Teaching Inventory (2004) and focused on the respondents’descriptions of
their beliefs about teaching. The scope and relevance of the initial set of questions were reviewed
by two fellow researchers and revised in light of their comments. A pilot interview was conducted
with a third fellow researcher and the interview protocol was further revised in light of the pilot.
The finalised protocol focused on how the respondents perceived their own working situation
(their workload, their ability to control what and how they taught, how teaching was valued in
their departments), how they perceived their students (student characteristics, class sizes, student-
teacher interaction), and finally their beliefs about teaching.
All interviews were conducted over the telephone and lasted between 40 and 60 min. The inter-
views were recorded and transcribed in full. The resulting data were analysed in two iterations in a
process combining Braun and Clarke’s guide (2006) to thematic analysis with Graneheim and Lund-
man’s(2004) understanding of coding levels. The recorded interviews were transcribed and anon-
ymised during the first iteration. The interviews were read several times to give a sense of the
material in its entirety. The data were then structured in a number of steps. Initially, the text was
divided into meaning units with each unit consisting of words that related to the same statement.
Next, the meaning units were condensed in order to shortening the text without losing the core.
Table 1. Respondents’online teaching experience and subject area.
ID Online teaching experience (years) Subject area
P1 11 Electrical engineering
P2 6 Electrical engineering
P3 6 Ecology
P4 4 Civil engineering
P5 14 Software engineering
P6 2 Material management
P7 6 Production management
P8 13 Software engineering
P9 4 Mechanical engineering
P10 3 Quality processes
P11 13 Software engineering
P12 3 Mechanical design
P13 4 Mechanical design
P14 10 Logistics
P15 10 Software engineering
4L. JENSEN ET AL.

Finally, the condensed meaning units sharing a commonality were grouped in order to create themes
and sub-themes.
During the second iteration, the raw data from the interviews were revisited in order to review the
validity of the themes, using Nvivo v.11 as a tool to store and structure the data. Subsequently, both
themes and sub-themes were revised to clarify demarcations and ensure that they were exhaustive.
In a final step, possible relationships between sub-themes were explored to clarify patterns. The main
themes and sub-themes are presented in Table 2.
Results and analysis
The respondents’descriptions of how alike and different they perceived it was to teach online and to
teach on campus yielded rich material. Two main themes emerged and are presented in Table 2:the
changing nature of the digital context and student-teacher interaction.
The changing nature of the digital context
A distinguishing theme of online teaching was the changeability of the digital teaching context.
Respondents described how they had experienced a succession of digital teaching-learning plat-
forms where each new platform presented different functionalities that in effect reconfigured the
set-up of the teaching context. Changes in the digital teaching context were attributed to three
sources: technology development, student influence, and teacher influence (sub-themes in
Table 2). It was accepted as inevitable and natural that technology development should occur and
lead to changes in the teaching context. Two short statements exemplified this: ‘The technical com-
plexity evolves’(P3), and ‘New versions arrive continuously’(P10).
Student influence was the second source that could initiate changes in the digital teaching
context. Student behaviour could directly influence how teachers configured parts of the digital
teaching context:
The problem that we noticed was that the students slowly but surely disappeared from there [the digital collab-
oration area offered by the course], so that in the end it was deserted and we teachers were alone there and wrote
‘Hello?’We asked the students where they had gone to [description of an external collaboration service]. And so we
explored that service and it worked well and in the autumn we started using it instead. And it works first class. It is
really good in every way. We use it for general conversation but not for exam purposes (P8).
The third and final source of changes in the digital teaching context was teacher influence. Respon-
dents regarded the digital teaching context as malleable and described how they changed its
configuration based on their own preferences. This happened when the existing teaching-learning
platform did not accommodate specific teaching-learning activities or when its features did not
meet the respondents’expectations. In two instances (P4, P8), groups of colleagues developed
custom-built tools that they integrated into their teaching context. This was done in both instances
because the respondents and their colleagues found that the teaching-learning platform provided by
their university lacked features to adequately support their teaching-learning goals. Other
Table 2. Main themes and sub-themes in respondents’descriptions of teaching online and teaching on campus.
Main themes Sub-themes
The changing nature of the digital context Technology development
Student influence on digital context
Teacher influence on digital context
Digital teaching-learning platform and addition of external interaction tools
Student-teacher interaction One-on-one/group communication
Close/anonymous student-teacher relationship
Class size
Time invested in teaching the course
STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION 5

respondents would add functionality or replace the functionality found in their teaching-learning
platform by adding pre-existing, external tools. Video services, conferencing services, chat forums
and collaboration services are all examples of external tools added by respondents. Only three of
the respondents relied solely on their teaching-learning platform; all other respondents added
from one to five additional tools.
The changeability of the digital teaching context experienced by the respondents ranged from
changes imposed by outside forces that they as teachers could not control (technology develop-
ment), to changes they could choose to incorporate (student influences), to changes instigated
and implemented by the teachers themselves (teacher influences).
Student-teacher interaction
The second main theme was student-teacher interaction with four sub-themes, see Table 2.
The way in which the respondents communicated with online students and campus students
differed. All respondents found that communicating with one student at a time, rather than with
groups of students, occurred more frequently online than on campus. Individual online students
would communicate directly with their teacher via e-mail, messages, telephone, in discussion
forums or via video links. Teachers would respond in kind and answer the individual student directly.
This happened in both small and large online classes. In contrast, contact with campus students con-
sisted to a larger degree of teacher-class communication linked to lectures and exercises, formats that
are prevalent on campus. All respondents reported a shift in communication towards more frequent
one-on-one communication online.
The respondents varied in how they perceived their relationship with online students compared to
campus students. Eight respondents found their online student relationship to be closer. They
focused on the differences between the contact they had with their online students and their
campus students: ‘We actually established a closer contact with the [online] students than in a phys-
ical classroom’(P6). These respondents also indicated that this was unexpected: ‘Those 30 sitting in a
classroom [on campus], each of them tends to stay a bit anonymous, but in a distance course it
becomes more personal. It is a bit contradictory’(P2). In contrast, five other respondents perceived
their online students to be more anonymous than their campus students. They stressed the sense
of distance between themselves and their online students: ‘It does become a bit more anonymous
when you teach at a distance. Often it’s just a name on a paper’(P12). They also accentuated the
qualitative differences between campus and online teaching: ‘A physical meeting is superior to
Skype and Adobe Connect […]. In the end it is better to meet person to person’(P14).
The differences and similarities between respondents who found their relationship with online
students to be closer and those who found it to be more anonymous were examined in order to
gain insight into this variation. The respondents’perceptions of their student relationships were
viewed in light of findings on three aspects: class size, time invested, and type of communication.
No relationships could be established between these aspects; for an overview see Table 3,
Columns 1–4. The respondents taught online classes of varying size. However, class size did not
show any clear relationship to whether the respondents perceived online students to be closer or
more anonymous. Two respondents, P7 and P11, taught online classes which varied in size
between 50–100 and 30–100 students, respectively, but they did not distinguish between the
larger and smaller online classes when describing their student relationships. The respondents eval-
uated the amount of time they invested in preparing and teaching an online course, using as a base-
line their own experiences of a comparable campus course. The variety among the respondents was
minimal. Five teachers found that they invested slightly more time teaching online courses; one
teacher found the time investment to be slightly less. The small variation in the respondents’esti-
mations did not form a pattern. Finally, all respondents found one-on-one communication to be
more frequent when teaching online. Since they all had similar experiences, no relationship was
found.
6L. JENSEN ET AL.

Approaches to teaching and prioritised teaching-learning activities
Since no relationships were found between the aspect of student-teacher relationship and any of the
three aspects of class size, time invested and type of communication, the authors decided to query
the material further. Other differences and similarities between respondents were explored by exam-
ining their approaches to teaching and their prioritised teaching-learning activities.
All respondents displayed characteristics associated with a student-learning approach to teaching.
Respondents would focus on student learning and their students’study situation when discussing
their own roles as teachers. An example is provided by a respondent (P15) who stated that the
most important thing he did as a teacher was to create a framework that offered students the possi-
bility to learn. Likewise, respondents found student activities and engagement to be central concerns
when designing an online course:
It doesn’t work just to upload a number of Internet lectures and then add an exam at the end. As a student you
have to work actively with the material. You have to get them to work as a class and discuss with each other even
though they are spread around the world (P6).
Respondents also reflected on how students learn when discussing their own roles as teachers:
[It is important] to push, to add a pulse to the discussions, to engage students. Because then their own activity
level increases, their own pulse …It is about creating pulse. By ‘pulse’I mean that the brain really heats up (P10).
While respondents shared a student-learning focus, they varied in how they prioritised teaching-
learning activities. Respondents either defined their first teaching priority to be to stimulate
student-subject interaction or to stimulate social interaction.
Respondents who prioritised student-subject interaction would direct their teaching efforts
towards creating stable and clearly structured frameworks for their students. This is illustrated by a
respondent who described his priorities as a teacher: ‘To plan well, to create a good structure for
the course so that it is very clear to the students’(P14). They would also strive to create situations
where their students actively engaged with the subject. Student learning was directly associated
with student-subject interaction: ‘There is a lot to do [for students] –to sit in front of the computer
and program and see what happens. That is probably the most important’(P15 on a software devel-
opment course). Timely in-depth feedback and responding to students were judged to be important
in order to support student learning. One of the most important things a respondent did to support
student learning was: ‘To answer questions from students promptly so that they can get on with their
own studies’(P5). An important role for these respondents was to imbue their students with a sense
of immediacy and enthusiasm for the subject, which would lead the students to engage actively and
Table 3. Variance in teachers’perceptions of student-teacher relationship (Column 1) viewed in light of four aspects: class size
(Column 2), time invested (Column 3), type of communication (Column 4), prioritised teaching-learning activities (Column 5).
ID
Column 1 Column 2 Column 3 Column 4 Column 5
Student-teacher
relationship Class size
Time
invested
Shift to one-on-one
communication
Prioritised teaching-learning
activities
P1 Closer 25 Same ●Social interaction
P2 Closer 80 More ●Social interaction
P6 Closer 20 Same ●Social interaction
P7 Closer 50–100 Same ●Social interaction
P8 Closer 100 More ●Social interaction
P10 Closer 70 More ●Social interaction
P11 Closer 30–100 Same ●Social interaction
P13 Closer 20 Same ●Social interaction
P5 More anonymous 10 Same ●Student-subject interaction
P9 More anonymous 20 Same ●Student-subject interaction
P12 More anonymous 60 Same ●Student-subject interaction
P14 More anonymous 100 Less ●Student-subject interaction
P15 More anonymous 100 More ●Student-subject interaction
STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION 7

extensively with the subject. In contrast, respondents who prioritised social interaction would incor-
porate group collaboration and seminars as central activities in their courses. They found that social
interactions between teacher and students were central activities in their courses: ‘We invest a lot in
providing supervision where you [the students] get help and where you get to discuss questions’(P7).
This view is enforced by a respondent who pointed out that: ‘Collaboration –that’s the biggest part’
(P10). Respondents described how the most important thing they did for students to learn was to
show engagement and make it clear that they as teachers were accessible to students. They also
expressed a desire for even more supervision time. One respondent pointed out the importance
of establishing rapport with students; she summarised her role as a teacher in one short sentence:
‘It is all about establishing communication’(P1). Likewise, an important part of the teacher’s role
was: ‘…to show that you are available, that you are present, that you are engaged […] You have
to be part of their development. You can’t just leave them to the net as it were’(P13). Core activities
for respondents who prioritised social interaction were supervision, providing meeting places, initi-
ating dialogues, and initiating group discussions.
When mapping the differences in teaching priorities against the respondents’perceptions of their
online student-teacher relationship, it was clear that those who described a more anonymous
relationship also prioritised student-subject interaction in their courses. Those who described a
closer relationship, on the other hand, all prioritised social interaction. See Table 3, Columns 1 and 5.
Discussion
One of the main findings in this study concerns student-teacher relationships. They are more than
just a trait of the overall atmosphere of a course; they can also influence student engagement and
motivation (Frisby and Martin 2010; Handelsman et al. 2005). This is also true for online students;
social engagement, including student-teacher relationships, is identified as a key element in online
students’engagement with their studies (Redmond et al. 2018). In the same vain, Margalina, De-
Pablos-Heredero, and Montes-Botella (2017) highlight the importance of high-quality student-
teacher relationships for student satisfaction in online teaching and argue that both teachers’and
students’satisfaction is important for the success of online courses. As generational identity
changes, social interaction becomes increasingly important to students (Gerhardt 2016). Gerhardt’s
study of millennials and how they differ from prior generations of students, argues that teacher socia-
bility plays an increasingly significant role in creating teacher credibility. The link between teacher
credibility and learning outcomes is well documented; a meta study on teacher credibility highlights
‘the meaningful role that teacher credibility plays in facilitating student learning’(Finn et al. 2009). In
short, the social element in student-teacher relationships can affect student motivation, engagement,
satisfaction and (indirectly) learning outcomes.
While teaching contexts have the potential to influence teachers and their teaching, the process is
far from straightforward (Englund, Olofsson, and Price 2017; Lameras et al. 2012; Scott 2016). Scott
(2016) called the process ‘fluid’and found that teachers’beliefs, practices and reflections interact
to inform how teachers think about online teaching. In the same vein, Lameras et al. (2012) suggested
that the interaction between contextual factors and teachers’beliefs has a greater influence on how
teachers go about their teaching than the actual features presented by the digital teaching-learning
platform. More specifically, Englund, Olofsson, and Price (2017) found a relationship between concep-
tual change and teacher characteristics. Together these studies demonstrate that the effect contex-
tual factors have on teachers and their teaching cannot be isolated, rather intrinsic and extrinsic
factors coexist and interact to form teachers’practices and perceptions. The respondents in this
study varied in how a change of context influenced their perceptions of their student-teacher
relationship. In light of the above, the interaction between the respondents’priorities (intrinsic
factors) and the features of the teaching context (extrinsic factors) may help explain this variation.
The respondents differed in their teaching priorities: they prioritised either student-subject inter-
action or social interaction. However, they agreed that a defining feature of the digital teaching
8L. JENSEN ET AL.

context was its changing nature. This was perceived to include changes due to technology develop-
ment as well as to student and teacher influence. They found that they could adjust the functionality
of the context to better suit student behaviour and their own teaching objectives. A key attribute of
favourable teaching contexts is that teachers have some control over how they teach (Prosser and
Trigwell 1997), and that the context is conducive to the type of teaching preferred by the teacher
(Kember and Kwan 2000). By adding, exchanging and developing features, the respondents could
exert a degree of control and configure the digital teaching context to become more conducive
to their preferred type of teaching.
With this in mind, we propose that the variation in how the respondents perceived their student-
teacher relationships is based on the interaction between the respondents’teaching priorities and
the changing nature of the digital teaching context. In effect, the digital context allows a teacher
to focus on either student-subject interaction or on social interaction more effectively than does
the physical campus context. When teaching online, teachers can include or exclude features that
support social interaction according to their teaching priorities. Teachers who prioritise social inter-
action can configure the one-on-one student-teacher interaction associated with online teaching to
support two-way interactions, just as they can add functionality that is specifically designed to facili-
tate social interaction. On the other hand, teachers who prioritise student-subject interaction can
channel the one-on-one student-teacher interaction to question-answer formats, which entails
little social interaction. They can choose functionality that supports student-subject activities and
omit functionality that is specifically designed to support social interaction.
When teaching face-to-face on campus, the social element of student-teacher interaction cannot
be included or excluded as easily. Classrooms and lecture halls on campus are stable structures gen-
erally designed to frame teacher-class interaction. Teachers who prioritise social interaction will find
that lectures and exercises create situations that act to promote teacher-class interaction rather than
individualised interaction. To establish social interaction with individual students in this setting
demands more organisation from the teacher than does teacher-class interaction, and therefore pre-
sents a higher threshold. Teachers who prioritise student-subject interaction can focus on activities
that promote this in class. However, the shared space and physical co-presence inevitably includes
some social interactions, even if the teacher does not attribute pedagogical value to it. This line of
reasoning is based on the interaction between intrinsic and extrinsic factors and offers a possible
explanation of the variation in how the respondents perceived their student-teacher relationships.
This study provides insight into how 15 university teachers perceive the differences between
teaching online and on campus. One of the characteristics of small, qualitative studies like this is
that they interpret the specific (Cohen, Manion, and Morrison 2011, 46). What is specific in this
study is represented by the characteristics of the respondents, their interpretation of their experi-
ences, the particular subjects they teach, and their actual teaching situations. To explore the
extent to which the specific can be generalised, this study could be repeated with a larger sample
including different disciplines and courses. Conducting a longitudinal study that focuses on how tea-
chers’experiences of online teaching evolve would add to the snapshot provided by the present
study.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
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