6.3 Online student satisfaction  (Page 3/6)

Purpose

Student satisfaction is congruent with definitions focused on meeting students’ expectations and needs, and/or fulfilling their desire. This definition meets specifically the use with college students in educational leadership. Further, the factors that have been used to examine and understand student satisfaction with online courses in educational leadership include satisfaction with administrative services, instructional course design and delivery, instructor interactions and feedback, student interactions, and student demographics, characteristics, and preferences. To understand student satisfaction with online courses, the primary importance is increasing the knowledge base for current research in all of these areas that have been related to student satisfaction (Sampson, et al., 2010; Tallent-Runnels, et al., 2006). For this reason, student satisfaction is regarded as a multi-faceted model of online course satisfaction. Indeed, student satisfaction has played a prominent role in shaping the course design of educational leadership initiatives in colleges and universities. In order to discuss student satisfaction with online courses, there needs to be an understanding of how to determine the satisfaction. Some researchers have divided components of online delivery to course environment, student outcomes, student demographics, and institutional factors. Online course offering continue to grow as well as the number of students taking online courses (Kolowich, 2011). Even though the numbers of student taking online courses has increased, the majority of faculty don’t rate the online courses as high as the traditional face-to-face courses with a common reason as lower “student-to-student communication” (Kolowich, 2011).

Factors of student satisfaction

Many factors can be studied when examining and understanding student satisfaction with online courses. Some of these factors include technology issues, quality instruction such as curriculum and course design, administrative issues such as student services and financial aid, teacher interactions with support and feedback, the learning outcomes, resource materials, flexibility, student connections and collaborations with each other, and assessments (Tallent-Runnels, et al., 2006). While another researcher might use a simple format such as students stating that they intend to take another online course as the most predictive of student satisfaction (Kaplowitz, Hadlock,&Levine, 2004).

Administrative services

The administrative issues such as student services and financial aid are important issues that relate to students’ satisfaction. Waters (2007) found that many of the policies and responses from employees at student service offices such as financial aid, registrar, counseling, advising, and admissions, did impact the satisfaction by students. The students wanted their questions answered quickly by knowledgeable employees who had accurate information. Further, the students wanted university employees to appear to have a helpful attitude. Waters (2007) further found that when examining student satisfaction, the students did not separate their satisfaction of instruction from their satisfaction form services. Therefore, if students were dissatisfied with student services, they were also dissatisfied with the online instruction. Woods (2008) found that the online students were more satisfied with student services than traditional students. The online students found counselors helpful with academic programs and course offerings, admission staff gave appropriate transcript information, and financial aid staff provided assistance with the completion of financial aid applications.