Students' Satisfaction and Perceived Learning with a Web-based Course

Abstract

This paper describes a study, which explored students' responses and reactions to a Web-based tertiary statistics course supporting problem-based learning. The study was undertaken among postgraduate students in a Malaysian university. The findings revealed that the majority of the students were satisfied with their learning experience and achieved comparable learning outcomes to students in the face-to-face version of the course. Students appreciated the flexibility of anytime, anywhere learning. The majority of the students was motivated to learn and had adequate technical support to complete the course. Improvement in computer skills was an incidental learning outcome from the course. The student-student and student-teacher communication was satisfactory but a few students felt isolated learning in the Web environment. These students expressed a need for some face-to-face lectures. While the majority of the students saw value in learning in a problem-based setting, around a third of the students expressed no opinion on, or were dissatisfied with, the problem-based environment. They were satisfied with the group facilitators and learning materials but were unhappy with the group dynamics. Some of the students felt unable to contribute to or learn from the asynchronous Web-based conferences using problem-based approach. Some of the students were not punctual and were not prepared to take part in the Web-based conferences. The findings have suggested a need to explicitly design an organising strategy in the asynchronous Web-based conferences using problem-based approach to aid students in completing the problem-based learning process.

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