The impact of modality on teacher-student interactions: Applying efficacy and competence to email and face-to-face communication

The current study extends previous instructional communication research related to teacher-student interactions both inside and outside the classroom. In particular, previous explorations of college student in-class and out-of-class participation and student's motives are used to provide a theoretical framework. The primary goal is to determine the extent to which individual students' differences, related to communication competence and communication self-efficacy, can be used to determine student preferred modality (e.g., face-to-face or email) for communicating with teachers. A 2 (self-efficacy: high and low) X 2 (communication competence: high and low) between-subjects factorial design revealed that the main effects for both self-efficacy and communication competence is bound by communication modality. Additional results, limitations, and future directions are discussed.