Developing and implementing a student satisfaction scale for the emergency remote teaching in higher education

Abstract

With the COVID-19 pandemic that started in Turkey in 2020, a compulsory and rapid transition to distance education has been made at all levels of education, and online systems have become indispensable environments of the education system. In this process, students' satisfaction with the distance education process has emerged as a variable that educational institutions primarily evaluate. This study aims to develop a valid and reliable measurement tool to determine the satisfaction levels of students who receive distance education in higher education institutions. The scale items were created by the researchers through a literature review, and the scope and face validities were ensured by means of expert opinion. The scale was applied online to 6540 students at a state university in the spring term of the 2020–2021 academic year, via the learning management system. Because of the factor analysis, a scale consisting of 29 items and 4 factors was obtained. The factors are "The role of the Instructor" with 11 items, "Attitude" with 7 items, "ICT Infrastructure" with 7 items and "Usability and Access" with 4 items. It is seen that scale items explain 71.35% of the total variance. The structure of the scale was evaluated with confirmatory factor analysis and it was seen that the model had an acceptable fit. The values obtained in the reliability analyses show that the scale has high reliability. The Cronbach alpha coefficient for the entire scale was calculated as 0.975. Additionally, the satisfaction scores from the scale were examined in terms of the gender, field and degree level, while a significant relationship was found between satisfaction and gender, there was no significant relationship between satisfaction and field as well as between satisfaction and degree level.