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sions, students' attitudes and beliefs about learning
changed from the negative to the positive. This
implies that learning is emotionally oriented and
closely associated with the social presence of
other people (Rippe, 2009), especially, that of a
course instructor, as he or she plays various roles
critical to student learning (Chang, 2007, 2009b).
Weaver and Albion (2005) endorsed the sig-
nificance of the instructor's social presence after
working with 60 students over a semester using
a sequential exploratory design. They found that
the instructor's social presence positively corre-
lated with the students' level of motivation. The
diminished presence of the instructor during the
course might be the major factor for students'
increased feelings of distance rather than close-
ness to their instructor. This study shows when
the level of perceived social presence inclines
downward as a semester progresses, the degree
of students' motivation to learn degrades. This
means although technology enables the ability
of human mind to create an illusion that would
manufacture feelings of connectedness, even
though an instructor and students are distantly
separated from one another, high social presence
must be mediated and maintained by the effort
exerted by an e-course instructor (Chang, 2007,
2009a, 2009b, 2009c) with teacher immediacy
behaviors.
Ni and Aust (2008) studied how verbal imme-
diacy behaviors affected students' online postings
through a computer-mediated text-based com-
munication system and found that teacher verbal
immediacy was a significant predictor of learners'
posting frequency on the online discussion forums.
This led them to extrapolate that it was the inviting
messages written by the instructor that motivated
the students to take academic actions to post their
perceptions on discussion boards frequently. The
instructor's act with the use of teacher immediacy
behaviors simultaneously also cultivated students'
self-regulation and self-management; the skills
are essential to lead to learning success and to a
sense of lifelong learning (Boud, 2000; Bolhuis,
2002; Duffy & Holmboe, 2006; Krathworhl et
al., in Mottet et al., 2007; Nicol & Mcfarlane-
Dick, 2006).
Even though Ni and Aust (2008) intended to
examine the role that teacher verbal immediacy
behaviors played in the desires of students' on-
line postings, the inviting messages sent by the
instructor seemed to work as relational messages
(relational immediacy) (Mottet et al., 2007). It is
apparent that teacher nonverbal immediacy led to
the development of the students' positive affect for
learning, which drove their active online postings.
Thus, obvious is the power of the joint forces:
technology (i.e., computer-mediated text-based
context) and human-to-human interaction (i.e.,
formative feedback with teacher immediacy cues)
in student learning. Technology allows expeditious
delivery of an instructor's responses or messages
as well as unlimited space for communicators to
express and explain ideas. Yet, it is the desirable
and effective human-to-human interaction initi-
ated and maintained by an instructor with the use
of teacher immediacy behaviors that can motivate
students to learn and to consciously regulate,
monitor, manage, and control their own learning,
leading to lifelong learning (Boud, 2000; Bolhuis,
2002; Duffy & Holmboe, 2006; Krathworhl et al.,
in Mottet et al., 2007; Nicol & Mcfarlane-Dick,
2006).
PRACTICAL STRATEGIES AND
EXPERIENCES CONCERNING
FORMATIVE FEEDBACK AND
LIFELONG LEARNING
Given the merits of the joint forces addressed
above, it is the time to focus on the concern of
how to deliver and implement formative feedback
in a computer-mediated text-based communica-
tion context. Yet, before practical strategies are
shared, let's first look at some questions and
answers. When students receive returned writing
assignments, what are they looking for right away?
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