Course-Bound and Beyond-Course Interaction in Higher Education: Exploring the Latent Structure of a Perception Scale

This study explores the latent structure of students’ perceptions about (a) teacher strategies to promote interaction (FOM) and (b) perceived interaction with actors and content (ACT) in undergraduate courses. Using survey responses from 158 students, we conducted exploratory factor analysis (MINRES, varimax) after assessing factorability (KMO, Bartlett) and factor retention (parallel analysis). Analyses were conducted in Python (Google Colab) using pandas, NumPy, SciPy, factor_analyzer, and Pingouin. an interpretable two-factor solution in which FOM items load primarily on one factor, while a subset of ACT items (Act5–Act8) loads more strongly on a second factor, although several ACT items and some FOM items also show non-trivial cross-loadings. We interpreted factor loadings ≥ 0.30 and report results based on the corrected item set. Findings are exploratory and suggest that perceived promotion of interaction aligns more closely with within-course interaction targets than with extra-course ones.