Assessing Online Learning: What One University Learned about Student Success, Persistence, and Satisfaction

Peer Review, Fall 2006 by Moskal, Patsy, Dziuban, Charles, Upchurch, Randall, Hartman, Joel, Truman, Barbara

Online Learning Yields Student Satisfaction

Student satisfaction with online learning is consistently high. Eighty-three percent of students who took online courses exclusively indicated they were satisfied with their academic program. When asked the reason for their satisfaction, students overwhelmingly indicate convenience and flexibility as being the motivating factors for their choosing online courses. Student comments indicate that replacing at least a portion of classroom time with online instruction provides them with the ability to accommodate their family, work, and academic lives. In fact, 80 percent of those who had taken a fully online course indicated that Web-based education enabled them to complete their degree program.

Online teaching and learning is changing the face of higher education in America as well as the rest of the world. In many respects, it is a natural consequence of burgeoning educational technology, the manner in which the current generation approaches learning, and global economic perspectives. Students have instant access to inlonnation. assemble their individual personal learning spaces (Oblinger 2006), and feel the competition for a place in the workforce. If Friedman (2005) is correct in his assertion that the global economic advantage of the United States is diminishing, then by extension the higher education world is flattening as well. Learning is moving lrom a "command and control" structure to a "connect and collaborate" environment where the roles ol students and teachers are changing dramatically.

Online education represents an innovative and proactive initiative diat extends access to higher education, assuring students that they have a local university (Mayadas 2006) he they on, near, or far from campus. Obviously, this plays out differently depending on the context of the institution, but one elemental question remains constant. Can we increase access through online technologies while maintaining or improving educational quality? This is a complex question encompassing many components, three of which we have addressed in this article: growth, success and withdrawal, and student satisfaction. The answer appears to be that with proper support mechanisms, online learning will grow at significant rates. Success and withdrawal rates will be more than acceptable and student satisfaction will be high. In manyrespects, we are experiencing what Jared Diamond (2005) refers to as "landscape amnesia," where, with the ubiquitous presence of media and technologv on our campuses, it becomes more and more difficult to remember the academv prior to these resources. Colleges and universities have always been media-rich environments for our students. The thought of not having remote access to information is a dim memory, even for the most aged members of the faculty.

Online learning is expanding the boundaries of higher education. For instance, recent development in the area of information fluency (Gibson 2005; Breivik and Gee 2006) suggests the need for considerable work to help students develop an understanding of the components of information fluency-information literacy, technology literacy, and critical thinking mediated by effective communication skillswith the objective of molding comprehensive strategies for gathering, evaluating, and using information properly. This has resulted in the University of Central Florida creating its Southern Association of Colleges and Schools reaffirmation quality enhancement plan in the area of information fluency (for more information, see www.if.ucf.eclu).