Student Satisfaction on Online Learning Environment: A Study of Western Province Universities in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Purpose: Even though education is a one of the precious assets of a country, the COVID-19 outbreak has caused to close higher education institutes for a long period of time. This new normality mandated to conduct teaching and learning activities through online methods without interrupting education. In this context, a satisfaction difference can be observed between physical and online learning among many Sri Lankan university students who used to physical lectures. Therefore, this study intends to investigate the impact of Self- efficacy, learner-content interaction, learner – instructor interaction and learner-learner interaction on student satisfaction within online learning environment. Method: This was a quantitative study conducted using 380 management undergraduates from University of Sri Jayewardenepura, University of Colombo, and University of Kelaniya. Electronically constructed questionnaire was used to collect information consisted with three parts and total of 37 items by using 5 items Likert scale. Finally, the collected data was analyzed using multiple regression analysis and tested 4 hypotheses developed. Findings: This study found that online learning self-efficacy, learner-content interaction, and learner-learner interaction have significant influence on student satisfaction in online learning environment. As opposed to this, learner – instructor interaction had no significant influence on student satisfaction. Implications: The results indicat that mainly universities will be able to build effective and innovative lecture delivery process, develop new methods and standards for online learning resulting in a quality higher education system in Sri Lanka. Future Research: The study has considered only the impact of self-efficacy and interactors on student satisfaction in online learning. There can be other variables too. The study is limited to the Western Province Universities. Thus, these findings can be varied in other Universities. Then future researches can be conducted by using other variables and different contexts.