Cognitive and Affective Learning in the Basic Course: Effects of Delivery Format, Immediacy, and Communication Apprehension

A quasi-experimental design was used to investigate changes in learning outcomes for students enrolled in large-lecture/break-out sections versus in self-contained sections of the basic communication course.More precisely, the study explores the relationship between communication apprehension, immediacy and learning outcomes for the two class formats.Results indicate that students' cognitive learning outcomes are slightly higher in the large-lecture/break-out sections versus self-contained sections. In addition, affective learning decreases for all students from the first day of class and slightly more for students in the large-lecture/break-out sections. However, when the teacher is perceived as highly immediate, there is no difference in formats. (Contains 5 notes, 55references, 1 figure, and 5 tables and a figure of data; an appendix contains the cognitive learning measure items.)