6.3 Online student satisfaction  (Page 5/6)

There is a need to balance students’ desire for anonymity and privacy protection with openness to learn from each other. An example might look at the students discussing openly with each other outside of the course system such as Google groups.

Student demographics and characteristics

Student satisfaction can be determined by students’ understanding, attitudes, and perceptions of how to be a student in the online format instead of a traditional face-to-face classroom. Mahoney (2009) found that students taking online courses felt they had more flexibility for the pace of the course as well as their schedules. Other researchers tried to determine if students needed to be more self-directed with a higher self initiative and higher technology skills in order to continue successfully with the flexibility of online course (Shinkareva&Benson, 2006). Their findings showed that there was not a positive relationship between students’ self-directed learning and technology skills that might lead one to believe that those were needed for satisfaction of the course. This finding has not been supported by other researchers and Levy (2007), Morton (1993), and Parker (2003) determined that self-motivated students were more likely to complete an online course and thus be more satisfied with online courses. Students also expressed feelings of isolation and too much time spent on unclear instructions of assignments (Mahoney, 2009). There was a sense by some students that online courses would be easier than traditional face-to-face courses (2009).

Some researchers have examined students’ demographics to determine if there was a relationship to students’ satisfaction. Older students were more satisfied with online course than their younger counterparts (Fredrickson, Pickett, Shea, Pelz,&Swan, 2000; Kaplowitz, Hadlock,&Levine, 2004). There is a difference in opinion of which age range was the most prevalent for taking online courses. Student between the ages of 35 and 55 preferred online courses (Abdulla, 2004; Allen&Seamon, 2006) while another group of researchers identified the largest age group for online course takers as 25 to 30 years old (Schneider&Germann, 1999; Tallent-Runnels, et al., 2006; Wang, 2004). Morton (1993) found that older students were more satisfied with online courses. Other researchers examined gender to determine if that had a relationship with student satisfaction, but found no difference between gender and student satisfaction (Kim&Moore, 2005; Levy, 2007; Xenos, Pierrakeas,&Pintelas, 2002). Yet there were differences in the responses from gender that rated the importance of teacher’s skills in discourse facilitation and instructional design as positively related to satisfaction with the online course (Richardson&Swan, 2003; Shea, Pickett,&Pelz, 2003). Female students tended to rate their teacher’s intellectual skills as the most important and male students rated their teacher’s managerial skills as the most important (Abdulla, 2004; Fredricksen, et al., 2000).