Online Student Perceptions

The purpose of this study was to explore the phenomenon of online
learning during COVID-19 academic stress, intolerance of uncertainty and psychological wellbeing among university students. The hypothesis of this study was that there is likely to be a relationship between academic stress, intolerance of uncertainty and psychological well-being among university students and
academic stress will negatively predict psychological well-being

Intolerance of Uncertainty, Psychological among university students. The data was collected online from the



Corresponding Author: Imran Ashraf Malik Email:
[email protected]


target sample of university students with an age range of 19 to 25 years using correlational research design with purposive sampling strategy. Scoring sheet of The Perception of Academic Stress Scale, Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale and Ryff’s Psychological Wellbeing Scale were administered on the sample population to assess the level of academic stress, intolerance of Uncertainty and Psychological wellbeing in them. The data was statistically analyzed through Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 23. According to hypothesis, the results of the study showed that there is significant positive correlation between Academic stress, intolerance of uncertainty and Psychological Wellbeing and academic stress predicting psychological wellbeing. Therefore, Teachers, educators, institutional administration, students, and parents will benefit from this research in understanding the current online learning environment and its effects on Pakistani students' education.

This study measures student learning, satisfaction, and interaction dynamics within Webbased online learning programs. The population of this study was students (n= 208) enrolled in multiple academic disciplines at an East Coast US university. A Web-based ...

The purpose of this interpretative, qualitative study was to discover reasons students participating in asynchronous online undergraduate courses perceive faculty as disinterested, the significance of this perception, and how students respond to disinterested faculty. Online education continues to evolve and change how students learn and how online undergraduate students perceive and respond to faculty members. With these changes, understanding which elements influence and impact the success of online undergraduate students becomes more complex. The distinctive social context of virtual learning environments often contributes to online students characterizing faculty as disengaged. Online students often have limited opportunities to interact directly with faculty, introducing occasion for students to misconstrue faculty intent, which can lead to deteriorated student perception of faculty, institution, online learning, and higher education. Student satisfaction and perceived success are reduced. This study documented the perceived experiences of eight students 18 years of age or older who attended and completed at least three asynchronous online undergraduate courses at a U.S. higher education institution during the years 2016 or 2017, and who experienced instructor behavior that they characterized as disengaged. Semi-structured, one-on-one interviews between the researcher and student participants facilitated data collection for this study. The major themes that emerged during analysis of the interview transcripts and field notes were lack of

The first people considered digital natives, the millennials, have already entered the teaching profession. As a result, we are faced with a remarkable generational diversity. This survey aimed to explore the generational change in teachers and the beginning of the incorporation of the first millennials (digital natives) into teaching. It was carried out through a qualitative study using focus groups and interviews with a total of 147 teachers. The main results found establish a generational clash between migrants and digital natives. This difference is present in the use and understanding of ICTs in the teaching task across the different teaching generations and in a generational diversity within the educational centres that has not been seen so far. However, this difference between teachers is also a condition that facilitates exchange between teachers of different generations. Junior teachers help veteran teachers in the use of ICTs and veteran teachers provide the expertise that new recruits lack.

In this issue of Library Technology Reports (vol. 55, no. 4), "Librarians as Online Course Designers and Instructors," the authors explore how librarians can apply research-based practices for instructional design and online pedagogy when designing and delivering instruction for fully online learning settings. This report explains the role of librarians in online learning-as designers, instructors, or coteachers. Throughout this report, the contributing authors address various considerations of online learning-ranging from fostering community and integrating social media to dealing with issues specific to online K-12 learning and to assessment and evaluation. Throughout, resources and recommended readings are provided.

Having the necessary skills to succeed in an educational program does not ensure that learners will achieve positive outcomes. Learners also need the motivation to learn in order to use their skills and engage in the learning process. This is especially true in online and blended learning (OBL) environments, which offer learners flexibility and autonomy to shape their own learning process. Since adult education in general and particularly OBL in adult education attracts a heterogeneous group of people, there is diversity amongst adult learners with regard to their motivation to learn and their reasons for choosing OBL. The purpose of this study is to examine whether motivational profiles exist amongst learners in the specific context of OBL in adult education. To achieve this objective, we conducted a survey with 180 learners in adult education. We administered the academic motivation scale questionnaire (AMS; Vallerand et al, 1992), targeting learners enrolled in an OBL program in ...

Background: E-learning is increasingly becoming a preference in higher education institutions worldwide; this is intended to assist educational institutions in achieving objectives to meet the proportion of individuals with their educational opportunities. Nevertheless, instructors and students frequently have concerns with their capacity to succeed in E-learning environments. Objectives: This study aimed to presents common eLearning challenges in regard to e-learning courses structure and its relations to various factors, for instance; students' autonomy, prior knowledge and experience, students-students dialogue, and students-instructor dialogue, and proposes solutions to these challenges based on the transactional distance theory. Moreover, this study presents evidence from Abuhassna et al. / Contemporary Educational Technology, 2022, 14(1), ep338 2 / 23 Malaysian higher institutions based on theoretical models for e-learning course structure and its relations to the factors mentioned above. Methods: Data have been collected from 680 university learners all over Malaysia. Data were then examined using exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modelling employing Smart PLS 3.0 software. Results and conclusion: Research findings indicated that e-learning course structure was affected by all dimensions of overall path analysis findings: student autonomy, students background, student-instructor dialogue, and student-student dialogue. However, the e-learning course structure showed insignificant with students' prior experience. Implications: Implications for universities are discussed accordingly. Such findings provide vital support to the integrative association among collaborative control (CC) and transactional distance theory (TDT) regarding e-learning environments experience, which might support universities administrators in the higher education industry to implement, plan and evaluate online learning platforms applications in their institutions.

With the ever-increasing availability of online -education opportunities, understanding the factors that influence online student satisfaction and success is vital to enable administrators to engage and retain this important stakeholder group. The purpose of this ex-post-facto, nonexperimental quantitative study was to investigate the impact of faculty professional development, faculty degree status, and faculty longevity upon online student satisfaction and success. A large, archived dataset from an online public state university was analyzed. Repeated measures Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) analysis was used to explore changes in student satisfaction over time. Results showed that both training and degree were not significant predictors of student satisfaction. On the contrary, faculty longevity was found to be a predictor of student satisfaction. Recommendations for future research include incorporating qualitative analysis and expanding the study to diverse institutional typ...

In this issue of Library Technology Reports (vol. 55, no. 4), "Librarians as Online Course Designers and Instructors," the authors explore how librarians can apply research-based practices for instructional design and online pedagogy when designing and delivering instruction for fully online learning settings. This report explains the role of librarians in online learning-as designers, instructors, or coteachers. Throughout this report, the contributing authors address various considerations of online learning-ranging from fostering community and integrating social media to dealing with issues specific to online K-12 learning and to assessment and evaluation. Throughout, resources and recommended readings are provided.

This study measures student learning, satisfaction, and interaction dynamics within Webbased online learning programs. The population of this study was students (n= 208) enrolled in multiple academic disciplines at an East Coast US university. A Web-based ...

The integration of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) with the traditional mode of teaching has always been a practice in higher education institutes of Sri Lanka since the past. This has created potentially a greater impact in teaching-learning practices. Virtual Learning Environment, a web based application has emerged as an essential, yet powerful tool in the higher education system of Sri Lanka in the recent days. This platform has evolved from Moodle/LMS in order to assist teachers and students to cope up to the global standards. This paper has assessed the opinions of students under various perspectives in incorporating the Virtual Learning Environment into their traditional mode of studies in the context of South Eastern University of Sri Lanka. The study found that the students are strongly positive towards the use of VLE to undertake their studies than the traditional method of teaching-learning process. Further, this paper also suggested that the essential measures are to be taken in order to increase the active participation of VLE since it is highly beneficial to both the parties involved.

With the ever-increasing availability of online -education opportunities, understanding the factors that influence online student satisfaction and success is vital to enable administrators to engage and retain this important stakeholder group. The purpose of this ex-post-facto, nonexperimental quantitative study was to investigate the impact of faculty professional development, faculty degree status, and faculty longevity upon online student satisfaction and success. A large, archived dataset from an online public state university was analyzed. Repeated measures Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) analysis was used to explore changes in student satisfaction over time. Results showed that both training and degree were not significant predictors of student satisfaction. On the contrary, faculty longevity was found to be a predictor of student satisfaction. Recommendations for future research include incorporating qualitative analysis and expanding the study to diverse institutional typ...

This article describes the design and development of a professional development program based upon research on the competencies necessary for online teaching success [1] conducted at Penn State University in 2009-2010. The article highlights how the results of this research are being aligned with various professional development courses comprising the certificate program for online faculty at Penn State’s World Campus. This article describes the process of research design and implementation to the direct application for professional development.

With the ever-increasing availability of online -education opportunities, understanding the factors that influence online student satisfaction and success is vital to enable administrators to engage and retain this important stakeholder group. The purpose of this ex-post-facto, nonexperimental quantitative study was to investigate the impact of faculty professional development, faculty degree status, and faculty longevity upon online student satisfaction and success. A large, archived dataset from an online public state university was analyzed. Repeated measures Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) analysis was used to explore changes in student satisfaction over time. Results showed that both training and degree were not significant predictors of student satisfaction. On the contrary, faculty longevity was found to be a predictor of student satisfaction. Recommendations for future research include incorporating qualitative analysis and expanding the study to diverse institutional typ...

Adult learners are taking advantage of the availability and convenience of online education. Mature learners in online higher education classrooms bring a wealth of experience filtered through cultural, generational, and socioeconomical differences. The purpose of this research was to explore community building in an online graduate course by tapping learners’ prior experience using an autobiographical memory exercise. The authors found that building social presence through course design contributed to increased communication and learning and encouraged an active and engaged online learning community. Recommendations for improving online learning communities provide educators with ideas for practice.

The first week of class… whether on-campus or online, we always plan a few orientation and get-to-know-you activities in an attempt to get our courses off on the right foot. One thing we have learned about these types of activities is that they cannot—and should not—take place only during the first week of a class. To really support students and help build a productive online learning community, these types of activities need to occur throughout the semester. Below are a few activities we have used to help students get oriented to and familiar with ...

Grounded in the Community of Inquiry framework in the online teaching context, the purpose of this mixed-methods study was to determine the role of social (peer) presence in predicting hospitality students' engagement and satisfaction in an online culinary or beverage lab. Findings included the indirect effect of social presence on satisfaction with the online lab through emotional cognitive engagement. Qualitative results revealed that while students did not have as many opportunities to engage with each other as they hoped for, the opportunities they did have were "meaningful". Results also study revealed that instructors, rather than peers, became the proxy for social presence as the semester progressed. Theoretical implications demonstrate the importance of emotional and cognitive engagement as the underlying mechanisms linking social presence to online lab satisfaction. Practical implications offer guidance for hospitality instructors to build and enhance opportunities for student engagement and peer-to-peer interaction.

has for the last few years deployed a net-based learning environment, mStar, to distribute courses to students independent of time and geographic distance. The mStar enviroment gives remotely attending students equal possibilities as traditionally attending students to take an active part of a course, as well as enhancing the learning experience for all students. This is made possible through a novel combination of IP-multicast technology and the WWW. This paper reports on experiences gained over a few years of practice and depicts a vision of the next generation of the mStar environment.

The first week of class… whether on-campus or online, we always plan a few orientation and get-to-know-you activities in an attempt to get our courses off on the right foot. One thing we have learned about these types of activities is that they cannot-and should not-take place only during the first week of a class. To really support students and help build a productive online learning community, these types of activities need to occur throughout the semester. Below are a few activities we have used to help students get oriented to and familiar with the course structure and materials, their course colleagues, and us.

Much research has been conducted on the "Community of Inquiry" (CoI) framework in education however only a few studies have focused on the postgraduate context specifically. To address this gap, this paper reports the development of a CoI in a postgraduate course in Knowledge Management (KM) in a blended learning environment, through the design of holistic curriculum, learning resources, and assessment and feedback strategies. Using a case study approach, key lessons learned are reported including the importance of providing flexible, work-relevant curricular and assessment; feed forward and feedback strategies; and student co-contribution to learning. These lessons serve as useful guidance for educators whom may consider using the CoI framework to underpin their future postgraduate teaching practice. The paper concludes with suggestions for future work.

Blackboard Collaborate (BC), a synchronous, multimodal platform, has been incorporated into Open University Australia (OUA) students' online learning experiences. This study sought to investigate the perspectives of 134 interdisciplinary OUA students via an online survey and follow-up interviews. Findings revealed students' positive perceptions about BC as an engaging, real-time medium for feedback exchange, knowledge sharing, and virtual community building. Despite appreciating lecturers' telepresence, some students preferred not to show faces or use voice chat and queried the expediency of the BC technology and the timing of lecturer feedback, however. This investigation highlighted the pedagogical implications of synchronous teaching in distance education.

The topic of study was communication technology preferences of online students and online instructors.  The generational cohorts of each group were all assessed to see if preferential differences existed due to age.  The research problem was that technical generational differences cause challenges with effective communication between faculty and students in the online academic environment.  Supported by a combination of the transactional distance and generational theory, the purpose of this quantitative comparative study was to identify and compare the communication modes that online students and online instructors prefer to use to communication with each other for academic purposes.  Data was collected through surveying and analyzed by means of ANCOVA.  There were 271 participants, whereas 81 were online instructors and 190 were online students.  ANCOVA found no significant difference between groups controlling for age F (1, 267) = .001, p = .972, where p > .05.  This outcomes of this study support previous research conducted by Chang et al. (2016) and Bailie (2017) that email is the preferred means of interacting in distance educations.  This study also supports Severt et al. (2013) and Skidmore et al. (2014) in that generation X and millennials prefer electronic technologies for collaborating.  It is recommended that practioners in distance education create standardized communication mode policies so that both online students and instructors know which technology to use so that a sense of connectedness is established to enhance academic success.  More research is needed as communication technology advances and newer generations reach college level age.

The purpose of this interpretative, qualitative study was to discover reasons students participating in asynchronous online undergraduate courses perceive faculty as disinterested, the significance of this perception, and how students respond to disinterested faculty.  Online education continues to evolve and change how students learn and how online undergraduate students perceive and respond to faculty members.  With these changes, understanding which elements influence and impact the success of online undergraduate students becomes more complex.  The distinctive social context of virtual learning environments often contributes to online students characterizing faculty as disengaged.  Online students often have limited opportunities to interact directly with faculty, introducing occasion for students to misconstrue faculty intent, which can lead to deteriorated student perception of faculty, institution, online learning, and higher education. Student satisfaction and perceived success is reduced.   

This study documented the perceived experiences of eight students 18 years of age or older who attended and completed at least three asynchronous online undergraduate courses at a U.S. higher education institution during the years 2016 or 2017, and who experienced instructor behavior that they characterized as disengaged. Semi-structured, one-on-one interviews between the researcher and student participants facilitated data collection for this study.  The major themes that emerged during analysis of the interview transcripts and field notes were lack of faculty concern, diminished or loss of respect for faculty/institution, lack of faculty competence, overburdened faculty, feelings of isolation, and diminished or loss of interest in higher education or online study.  The student participants discussed examples of how faculty actions, or inactions, cultivated negative feelings.  This study revealed some promising insight to faculty–student interaction from the student perspective.  As a result, improved dialogue between instructors and students can establish a basis to motivate students and improve their perceptions of online interaction with instructors.  Improvements can arise from scholarly discourse surrounding the exploration of what specific factors induce the subjectivity of undergraduate students’ perceptions of faculty-student interaction.  This study’s data and findings can support the efforts of administrators, course developers, and instructors to improve awareness, behavior, and training programs for faculty members who teach in online learning environments.

While colleges cannot replicate workplace settings, the e-mail assignment outlined here is an opportunity to help students learn and practice necessary soft skills such as written communication and interpersonal skills. This email competency assignment requires students demonstrate their technical skill writing effective emails in a professional tone, and offers students and instructors an opportunity to connect interpersonally outside of the classroom.

The purpose of this experimental study was to redesign a traditional undergraduate course by integrating MOOC content and flipped classroom practice and to see its effectiveness through students’ experience and perceptions. The course named “Internet and Distance Education” was taught in Winter Semester, 2013 at the Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China to 15 undergraduate students majoring in education. E-learner satisfaction surveys found that students were generally satisfied with many aspects of the redesigned course, including instructor response timeliness, instructor attitude toward the technology, e-learning course flexibility, technology quality, Internet quality, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and perceived e-learner satisfaction, while learner perceived interaction with others was not so satisfactory. Based on the findings, several suggestions to improve the course design are offered.

As electronic communication becomes increasingly common, and as students juggle study, work, and family life, many universities are offering their students more flexible learning opportunities. Classes once delivered face-to-face are often replaced by online activities and discussions. However, there is little research comparing students' experience and learning in these two modalities. The aim of this study was to compare undergraduates' preference for, and academic performance on, class material and assessment presented online vs. in traditional classrooms. Psychology students (N = 67) at an Australian university completed written exercises, a class discussion, and a written test on two academic topics. The activities for one topic were conducted face-to-face, and the other online, with topics counterbalanced across two groups. The results showed that students preferred to complete activities face-to-face rather than online, but there was no significant difference in their...

Online learning has grown exponentially in recent years; however, dropout problem remains challenging for some online programmes. The dropout problem can be attributed to a number of reasons, with a lack of interaction between learners and the instructor constituting one of the main reasons. The lack of interaction also leads to learners' feeling of isolation. Learning communities can provide learners with an environment conducive to increased interactions and alleviate their feeling of isolation. Unfortunately, there are no clear rules that instructors can follow to help learners create learning communities. In this paper, we propose guidelines for online instructors to facilitate the development of learning communities in online courses. We first review the definition of a learning community, importance of a learning community and factors affecting the development of a learning community. Afterwards, based on a review of the existing guidelines and other relevant literature, we propose guidelines for facilitating the development of learning communities in online courses.

Despite the growing popularity of online classes, lower retention rates have raised concerns about the quality of online higher education. This article outlines six instructional practices to enhance online engagement and retention. Specific strategies to build community and student centered environments are discussed.
Keywords: online education, online retention, online engagement, best practices for online instruction

In this research a survey was performed among the students of Department of Computer and Systems Sciences (DSV) at Stockholm University (Sweden) and the students at the Department of Computer Science and Telecommunications (DCST) at National Research University of Electronic Technology (Russia). The research aimed at exploring the difference in acceptance rate of the e-learning platform as part of the education by the students in two different countries. Some of the findings were that the largest proportion of DCST students never previously used any e-learning software before coming to the university, while the students in both DSV and DCST prefer the traditional face-to-face communication with the teachers. It was also noted that there is a significant difference in the teachers’ proficiency in using the e-learning software as part of the educational program in University two departments, where the DCST had a much lower rate of support of online-based education compared to DSV.

This article includes a reflection on the experiences, both positive and negative, in using a collaborative approach to the development of an online instructional design model. It outlines the processes and points out the challenges associated in the creation of courses to be taught on the Internet using this model. There are reflections on the practical application of this model within a higher education setting for both faculty and administrators. Moreover, an evaluation of the model and its effectiveness for distance learning courses are discussed. Lastly, conclusions and implications for expansion and further use are presented.

Given the importance of online instructional procedure(s) that engage students in rich online discussions and enhances the quantity and the quality of the discussions, the purpose of this study was to investigate how a particular online instructor engaged graduate students in asynchronous online discussions, what roles the instructor played to engage graduate students in asynchronous online discussions, and how the instructional procedures used in this course were effective. Qualitative and quantitative research methodologies were applied when analyzing the data. Triangulation of sources and review by inquiry participants were conducted to increase the credibility of the research results. Multiple data were collected from the professor, three teaching assistants, and six graduate students. All participants were interviewed about their online course experience. The findings reveal a five-step instructional procedure the instructor applied to engage the students in rich asynchronous online discussions. The results pointed out that the use of e-mails and the presence of the instructor via online discussions had a huge impact on the students' engagement in rich online discussions. In addition, interaction among instructors and students through e-mails positively affected the student-student and student-content interaction. The students' engagement in the discussions was enhanced from receiving consistent academic feedback from the instructor. The findings particularly underlined the use of teaching assistants in helping with the numerous online discussions required in an online course.

This study examined faculty characteristics and behaviors in 46 MBA courses conducted over a two-year period. We found that both formal instructor activities, referred to in the online learning literature as teaching presence, and informal instructor activities, known as immediacy behaviors, were positive predictors of student perceived learning and satisfaction with the educational delivery medium.

Teaching presence has been shown to influence student satisfaction as well as perceptions of perceived learning. However, past research on teaching presence has not investigated how teaching presence differs across discourse communities. This study investigated student's perceptions of teaching presence across different discourse communities (i.e., different academic disciplines) in accelerated online courses.