Online Learning Management and Learners’ Behavior: A Case Study of Online Learning in Japan

Abstract

Online learning has been playing a major role in university teaching across the world. For three consecutive years, the authors have surveyed bachelors and masters students who were enrolled in online courses at a Japanese university, in order to study learners‘ behavior while they are engaged in online courses. It was also their goal in this study to identify learning strategies and instructional design techniques that can contribute to the development of e-learning standards and can be applied to online course design and management. This book chapter will discuss how these issues were addressed using the survey data collected over three years, and based on the results of data analyses, provide a discussion of some guiding principles for the design and implementation of online learning.