Research abstracts.

The article discusses communication apprehension (CA) by students enrolled in synchronous distance education and lists several research reports on distance education. It states a measure to determine the existence of a context-based technology-CA was created and administered using media sensor device. Results indicated that some students experienced a high degree of state-CA in synchronous distance education and students who actively used distance education technologies showed lower level of state-CA. It was found that computer conferencing did not significantly improve scores on essays. It mentions that instructor's specification of requirements of student's contributions in discussion was correlated to student's perceived amount of learning.