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Top1. Introduction
In recent years, a college degree has become more of a necessity than a luxury. Hence, research has been trying to study higher education from different perspectives. It seemed to be essential that higher education institutions try to increase the quality of their operations, keeping in mind the satisfaction of their customers, namely students, and more generally the society. Thus, student perceptions, namely student values, opinions, beliefs, and cultural backgrounds, have become the center of the transformation of higher education and student experience (Manca, Grion, Armellini, & Devecchi, 2017). This, in turn, increases the value of student satisfaction and perception of education. One way to measure student perception, although not very comprehensive or accurate, is student evaluation, which are used to measure instructors’ teaching effectiveness. However, the impact of student evaluations is disputable from both the educational and the statistical viewpoints. Hence, extra care should be taken into consideration when interpreting the statistical findings in contrast with more theoretical settings (Claessens, 2020).
The importance of education motivated educators to create new media for learners and instructors to use. One of the outcomes of this process was online learning. Online education can be defined as the use of technology, specifically the Internet, to deliver educational solutions to increase knowledge and improve academic performance (Jelena & Ana, 2019). Online learning has become more popular in higher education due to its flexibility in course offerings, attractiveness to students, cost-effectiveness, and the ability to save time and effort for both the learner and the teaching institute (Dyment, Downing, Hill, & Smith, 2018a). However, online education is relatively understudied (Hamann, Pollock, Smith, & Wilson, 2017) and needs more investment in areas related to pedagogical and educational practices.
The success of online learning depends on several factors, one of which is instructors' ability to individualize teaching and support methods (Kennan, Bigatel, Stockdale, & Hoewe, 2018). Nevertheless, evidence suggests that it can be unsuccessful in some disciplines, such as in the medical field (Franchi, 2020). One must admit that there are many differences between traditional face-to-face and online educations. Institutions always seek to improve the latter by assessing their learning environment to improve their learning outcomes. This should be replicated with the latter, keeping in mind that the online learning environment differs tremendously from its face-to-face counterpart (Mousavi, Mohammadi, Mojtahedzadeh, Shirazi, & Rashidi, 2020).
A study conducted on students from Griffith University, Australia, tried to measure the impact of migrating from face-to-face education to online education on students’ satisfaction. It revealed that online classes are highly scalable; hence, they can be offered in large numbers at low cost, which can direct any amount saved into other essential activities such as research and scholarships. The study also highlighted the convenience of online learning; as it is perceived to be more flexible and convenient to student time. However, it reported that face-to-face courses are still more popular among students in terms of student satisfaction with instructors (Guest, Rohde, Selvanathan, & Soesmanto, 2018). This unpopularity was highlighted by Adnan and Anwar (2020), where 71% of students of the National University of Science and Technology, Pakistan, replied in a survey that they preferred conventional classrooms. Students indicated that they were fine with having assignments online but were not in favor of virtually having the whole experience. The authors were convinced that online learning cannot achieve its full potential in underdeveloped countries (Adnan & Anwar, 2020). Therefore, it is evident that a good IT infrastructure is essential for the success of online education.