Assessing Student Experience of Online Learning and Identifying the Components and Activities Needed for Effective Online Learning Environments: Students Expectation of Online Learning

Introduction And Business Problem

The online mode of education is spreading worldwide with students accepting the learning environment as they feel there is more flexibility and more opportunities to learn through innovative methods. (Sharma et al., 2020) Educational needs are changing fast and assuming that technology would provide the infrastructure for these changing needs it is important for institutions to identify the right pedagogical tools and techniques in the new learning environment. The digital transformation has opened new opportunities for instructors to facilitate teaching and learning, however there are challenges as the digital technology is expanding with fast rate and the teachers need to update their content and pedagogies in pace with the innovative tools and techniques coming in the market each day. The students are more technology friendly as compared to teachers and this poses a challenge to teachers to understand what components and activities the students fetch in online courses. (Xu, 2007) Online learning method is more cost effective than traditional classroom learning but there are many issues arising within the context of self-study, independent study programs where the human touch is missing from the student’s perspective. Though the students find convenience in all aspects still they get bored and miss the classroom teaching where they experience face to face connect with teachers and students. Students experience that in online mode the expression is lacking, though there is freedom in asynchronous mode yet learning happens more where teacher involvement and interaction is more, hence there is a need to observe and analyse these situations in order to discover areas of improvement in the content development, innovative instructional strategies.

With the rising demand of online platforms and research, studies show that meeting student expectations and achieving student’s satisfaction towards effective learning is not that easy. Therefore, there is a need to understand the students experience whether good or bad and advance the online components and activities to meet students’ expectations because good experience leads to satisfaction and the outcome is effective learning and improved performance. The online learning market consists of corporates, academics and consumer fields and has various segments like teachers, mentors, content providers and technology vendors. In an online teaching/learning environment, where teacher’s competency is important, but at the same time, student's characteristics/ backgrounds, digital literacy, design features and student satisfaction are a significant prediction for student learning outcomes. The issues such as components and activities students expect from online/blended environment especially in developing countries remains unresolved as a result the marketplace of learners is not responding to e learning as anticipated which poses a challenge to universities and organizations to work in this arena. To make efforts towards resolving this problem the study is aimed to understand the perception of students towards effective online learning and identify what components and activities they expect from institutions to integrate online /blended learning practices, The study discusses the factors, considered significant for online/ blended learning and teaching effectiveness, the results of the study would contribute towards developing innovative and advanced online courses and develop strategies where teacher involvement is more to meet the students demand of e learning courses, make them feel happy and also help in improvement of student performance which would support them in setting goals and career advancement.