Instructional Media Choice: Factors Affecting the Preferences of Distance Education Coordinators

摘要

This article examines the impact of several variables on media choice among 51 distance education course coordinators at the Open University of Israel. Hypotheses were drawn from Media Richness Theory (Daft & Lengel, 1984), Social Influence Theory (Fulk, 1993), Media Symbolism (Trevino, Lengel & Daft, 1987), and Experience Account (King & Xia, 1997), along with research questions about the influence of additional contextual variables. It was found that prior skill has a significant and meaningful impact on media choice and that both social influence and medium richness correlate with media choice. However, contrary to theoretical predictions, media richness and media symbolism did not correlate with perceived levels of equivocality in a message.