An Exploration of Student Dissent in Asynchronous Online Courses

Weaknesses in instructor communicative behaviors negatively affect online learning. The purpose of this study was to understand how instructor clarity and computer-mediated immediate communicative behaviors influence student dissent in the asynchronous online classroom. Distance learning is not new to career and technical education; however, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many career and technical education programs to offer more courses online. Through the guidance of construal level theory, perceived immediacy with the instructor and information flow were predicted to mediate instructor communicative behaviors and student dissent. The mediated models were supported for expressive and vengeful dissent. Although fit statistics were strong for the rhetorical dissent model, the indirect effects were not statistically significant. As such, instructor clarity and computer-mediated immediate behaviors serve as predictors of students' expressive and vengeful dissent in the asynchronous online classroom.