Publication Date

2019

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Henningsen, Mary L.

Degree Name

M.A. (Master of Arts)

Legacy Department

Department of Communication

LCSH

Communication

Abstract

Sites like Rate My Professors (RMP) offer abundant, potentially problematic foundations of expectations about instructors in higher education. Framed in Expectancy Violations Theory, this thesis investigated the relationship between online ratings and learning. To conduct an experimental test of EVT in this context, three RMP reviews (i.e., positive, neutral, negative) were created to induce an expectation of instructor clarity. Two lectures were filmed (i.e., clear, unclear) to violate or affirm the expectation students may have formed from the reviews. The results of the experiment indicated that violation of expectations did not influence learning (i.e., quiz score, cognitive learning, or most subscales of affective learning). Instead, there was a consistent effect for the clarity of the video message. Despite the formation of expectations through RMP reviews, the results indicated that expectations did not influence learning as much as actual clarity did. These findings suggest that, although RMP may be abundant, it may also be benign.

Comments

Committee members: Bryan, Ferald; Valde, Kathleen.||Advisor: Henningsen, Mary L.||Includes bibliographical references.

Extent

48 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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