6.3 Online student satisfaction  (Page 4/6)

Instructional course design and delivery

The components of quality course design and delivery are important in online courses as well as traditional courses and do impact the students’ satisfaction with courses. Instructors may enhance the design of their courses when factors of quality curriculum are aligned with the course objectives, resources, as well as resources and assessments that align together. There should be clear content standards that describe the knowledge and skills expected for students to learn in the course. Additionally, there needs to be clear performance standards so that students understand the degree of attainment they need to meet the standard. Further, the variety of technology may be utilized to help instructors design and deliver the courses. Faculty could include discussion group posts, assignments for students to respond to each other in weekly discussion boards, instructor initiated discussions, and instructor feedback on guided conversations.

Instructor interactions and feedback

The importance of instructor interactions with students as well as interactions between students is an important component of student satisfaction with online courses. Sahin (2007) determined that personal relevance, instructor support, active and authentic learning opportunities were significantly related to student satisfaction. Others researchers supported the importance of instructor interactions and increased student satisfaction when there was quality interactions between the instructor and students (Areti; 2006; Chen&Guo, 2005; Hartman&Truman-Davis, 2001; Picciano, 2002; Richardson,&Swan, 2003; Shea, et al., 2003). One of the differences between traditional courses and online courses for instructor feedback is a time delay. In traditional courses, the instructor and students are present and the instructor is able to give feedback immediately and quickly with students’ discussion. The online courses may have some delay in the instructor’s feedback. Therefore, some ways to increase instructor interactions and feedback with online courses are to post reactions to students’ work, schedule chat times between the instruction and students, provide feedback on discussion threads, and grade assignments in a timely fashion. Picciano (2002) studied interactions and found a positive relationship between higher levels of interactions between the students and the instructor and higher scores on students’ writing assignments. Then higher scores and students’ perceived learning also led to higher satisfaction with the course and the instructor (Richardson&Swan, 2003). Additionally, researchers found a significant relationship between the amount of interactions between students and their instruction with the instructor’s satisfaction of the course (Hartman&Truman-Davis, 2001).

Student interactions

When students are concerned with the development of their own identity within a class, then active engagement with the development of community in the course environment becomes important for student satisfaction of an online course (Cameron, Morgan, Williams,&Kostelecky, 2009). The use of collaborative working groups of students with relevant and meaningful assignments helps students develop a supportive relationship with each other and increases their perception of a caring relationship that impacts their satisfaction. The designing of group projects needs to have the social structure established by the instructor that develops the trust between group members. This connection between students is as important as the connection between the instructor and the student. The instructor needs to provide timely feedback with enough guidance to ensure adjustments and learning.