Student Satisfaction with Online Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Study at State Universities in Sri Lanka

Abstract

This quantitative study investigated the determinants of students’ satisfaction with their online learning experience at Sri Lankan universities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data was collected from 1376 undergraduates enrolled in various courses in humanities and social sciences at three state-owned universities in the country. The results of the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) revealed that the independent variables of the model, namely perceived learner motivation, perceived challenges of e-learning, and interaction significantly affected students’ satisfaction with their new online learning experience. Out of the three variables, learner motivation exerted the strongest effect on students’ satisfaction, implying the crucial role self-regulated learning—characterized by motivation—plays in online learning environments. The study has several implications for both creating and ensuring the long-term sustainability of productive and student-friendly online learning spaces in higher education.

Synchronous Online Learning in Higher Education: Vietnamese University Students’ Perspectives

“…Alternatively, besides Tomlinson's (2017) conceptualization, our target students' academic accomplishments, in light of SOL, are aligned with previous student self-efficacy research (Prior et al, 2016;Shen et al, 2013), which have shown a connection between selfefficacy and academic success using online platforms (Hettiarachchi et al, 2021). Quantitatively, our students perceived the ultimate outcome of SOL for their developmental collaboration and spirits (M = 3.670).…”

“…Secondly, perceived growth was also a noticeable aspect, suggesting that the students further developed their knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors in response to the available resources on the distant learning platforms (Tomlinson, 2017). Our findings were reflective of the students' strong confidence and sense of regulated learning placed into the learning process (Hettiarachchi et al, 2021). The students gained disciplinary knowledge in a number of ways, had appropriate attitudes towards learning, and actively engaged in e-learning, as benefiting from an educationally-digital learning environment (Li, 2021;Varenin et al, 2021).…”

“…Despite that the perceived growth's mean value was slightly lower than 4.0, but strongly rated, we acknowledge that students shared significantly positive reflections on the courses. It was generally observed that our target students rated their satisfaction with SOL in terms of academic sessions (with instructors, tutors, and peers) and non-academic sessions (such as extracurricular activities) in a highly satisfactory manner (M = 3.93), in close association with the students' self-regulated learning (Hettiarachchi et al, 2021). In response to the first theme, we would like to pay considerable attention to two areas of academic and non-academic attention since we see that these two blocks should be parallel, especially with regards to the former's focus on their disciplinary knowledge and that of the latter on their social skills towards their employability capitalhuman capital (Tomlinson, 2017).…”

“…With this form of online education, students are more likely to self-regulate and become fully responsible for their learning (McMahon & Oliver, 2001). This self-regulated learning is crucial for online students' success (Artino, 2009;Hettiarachchi et al, 2021;Tomlinson, 2017;Wijekumar et al, 2006).…”

Online Teaching during COVID-19 Pandemic: Teachers’ Experiences from a Chinese University

“…There are several research projects conducted worldwide regarding online teaching and learning, particularly after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic [6,8,26,[28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]. However, most of these research papers are based on quantitative studies, particularly on survey of students.…”