The 91 participants in the present study were students at two mid-western universities.
Participant ages ranged from 18 to 25 years old. All study participants completed an anonymous,
online survey containing 104 questions. These questions were compiled from Spitzberg's (2006)
computer-mediated communication competence questionnaire and Wrench and Punyanunt-
Carter's (2007) computer apprehension measure. Survey questions queried self-perceptions of
CMC knowledge, motivation, skill, apprehension, medium, and degree of participation in the
online classroom discussion. Responses were factor analyzed using a principal axis extraction
and varimax rotation (Gorsuch, 1983). These responses loaded on six factors that accounted for
59% of the variance. These six factors showed clean loadings for knowledge, motivation, skill,
apprehension, medium, and involvement as those concepts are defined by Spitzberg (2006) and
Wrench and Punyanunt-Carter (2007). The items loading on each of these factors were entered
into a linear regression analysis, using a direct entry method. The regression model analyzed the
influences of knowledge, motivation, skill, apprehension, and medium as predictors of student
participation in the online discussion of the course