Quality of Online Courses at a Tertiary Learning Institution: From its Academic Staff s Perspective. Lai Mei Leong* 1, Chong Lin Koh* 2

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1 Quality of Online Courses at a Tertiary Learning Institution: From its Academic Staff s Perspective Lai Mei Leong* 1, Chong Lin Koh* * 1 Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia, * 2 INTI International College, Malaysia The Asian Conference on Education Abstracts Online courses have been adopted rapidly in tertiary learning institutions as a delivery mode for its courses in order to reach as many students as possible as well as to take advantage of the ease of access of the course content by these students. This online delivery mode is also adopted for academic staff training and professional development purposes. Thus, the views of the academic staff are no less important for the success in such an endeavour. In view of this, a small scale study was carried out to investigate the opinions of the academic staff in a big and well-established private college in Penang, Malaysia, which is also a member of the Laureate International Universities, regarding the online courses that have been implemented in that institution. Thirty lecturers from various departments in that establishment took part in this survey which used a five-point Likert scale questionnaire to find out their opinions on various aspects of the online courses in that college. This paper reports on the lecturers views regarding six aspects, namely, course content, course organization, assessment and evaluation of student learning, website accessibility as well as security and support, interactive learning environment, and institution commitment. iafor The International Academic Forum 66

2 INTRODUCTION Online education, or online learning, usually refers to the learners being at a distance from the tutor or instructor, and that the learners use some form of technology (usually a computer) to access the learning materials as well as to interact with the tutor/instructor and sometimes even other learners. In addition, the learners are provided with some form of support (Ally 2004). Online education is gaining popularity, especially among institutions of higher learning, due to the rapid expansion of computer technology and broadband connectivity. Moreover, other reasons include alleviating capacity constraints, capitalizing on emerging market opportunities as well as being a catalyst for institutional transformation (Volery and Lord 2000). Some advantages of online education are that learners do not need to travel long distances to be present in a classroom during a learning session, and neither do they need to learn at a prescribed time, as in conventional classroom learning. This reduces the need to build big campuses because learners can access the learning materials from their home, for example, and learners can optimize their learning time, especially working people with tight schedules. Another benefit of online learning is being able to deliver information via modes not found in traditional sources, namely, multimedia and animation. Multimedia allows learners to apply concepts realistically in learning exercises, while animation helps to demonstrate difficult concepts. In view of the benefits of online education, Laureate International Universities embrace this mode of learning passionately because they believe in providing new opportunities for its academic staff to gain new knowledge and develop themselves professionally. BACKGROUND Laureate International Universities is a leading international network of quality, innovative institutions of higher education. This network, comprising 60 accredited campus-based and online universities spanning over 29 countries throughout North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia, offers undergraduate and graduate degree programmes to more than 740,000 students. It offers hundreds of career-focused, undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degree programmes in fields including architecture, art, business, culinary arts, design, education, engineering, health sciences, hospitality management, information technology, law, and medicine (Laureate International Universities 2012). To enhance its teaching staff skills, Laureate International Universities has set up a portal called the Faculty Development Initiative whereby Laureate teachers have online access to various resources and professional development opportunities. In the latter, courses are available to the academic staff members. The courses, which the lecturers may register for, are grouped under Induction, Learning Methods, and Laureate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. The course offered in Induction is called Laureate Faculty in the 21 st Century, while the courses available in Learning Methods are Collaborative Learning, Problem-based Learning, and Case Study Methodology. On the other hand, Laureate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education has a series of five instructor-led modules, namely, Introduction (Module I), Student-centred Teaching (Module II), Teaching Tools (Module III), Assessment Tools (Module IV), and Technology Tools (Module V). The duration of the Induction course and the three courses under Learning Methods is 20 hours each. These four courses may be registered in any sequence. The courses in the Laureate 67

3 Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, on the other hand, must be taken in sequence, that is, Module I followed by Module II, which is then to be followed by Module III, and so on. Due to the fact that lecturers at Laureate International Universities member institutions are encouraged to register and sit through these in-house online courses for professional development purposes, these lecturers have thus become students when they are following any of these courses. This small scale study was meant to obtain the opinion of the teaching staff at Laureate International Universities regarding the quality of these in-house online courses after having gone through these courses themselves as registered participants. It also studied the influence of gender, and years of teaching experience of the academic staff as well as the school they were working in on their perception of the quality of these online courses. METHODOLOGY Instrument A survey questionnaire was used in this small scale study to collect the data on the lecturers perceptions regarding the online courses available in their learning institution. There were a total of 28 items in the survey form, which included three items on the respondents background information. All the questionnaire items, with the exception of the three items on background information, were provided with a five-point Likert scale, ranging from 1=Strongly Disagree to 5=Strongly Agree. Besides that, all the 25 items were positivelyworded. The items were grouped under various factors, such as, course content, course organization, and assessment and evaluation of student learning. These factors, which have been identified to be successful ones in implementing an e-learning programme, were drawn and adapted from Goi and Ng (2009). For example, the factors web page accessibility and web site security and support from Goi and Ng (2009) have been merged into a single factor in the present study as website accessibility, security and support. The reason this was done was because these were considered as quality factors for websites (Zhang and von Dran 2001). Some sample items as well as the number of items associated with each factor in the questionnaire are listed in Table 1. Table 1: Factors, sample items and number of items in questionnaire Factor Course content Course organization Sample items The objectives of the course are clearly stated. Language used is simple and clear. Activities are aligned with the learning objectives. No. of items

4 Assessment and evaluation of student learning Website accessibility, security and support Criteria to pass an assessment are stated clearly. Results on each assessment or activity are given promptly. The website is easily accessible. Technical support or Help Desk is available. 4 4 Interactive environment learning Learners are encouraged to give opinions or ideas in discussion forum. 4 Institution commitment The management is committed to improve the quality of the course. The management encourages learners to register for the course. 3 Total 25 Respondents A total of 30 lecturers from a big and well-established private college in Penang, Malaysia participated in this survey. This tertiary institution also happened to be a member of the Laureate International Universities. A criterion we set for our respondents was that all of them must have attended or were attending at least one of the Laureate online courses at the time of the study. These participants possessed different years of teaching experience and were from various schools. DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION A breakdown of the number of respondents in terms of their gender, years of teaching experience and school they are working in is shown in Table 2. There were about equal number of male and female respondents, with the majority of them having just begun their teaching career. As for the school they were working in, nearly half of them were from the Centre of Excellence for Pre-University Studies. 69

5 Table 2: Number of respondents according to gender, years of teaching experience and department No. of respondents Gender Teaching experience Male 16 Female years years 6 More than 10 years 9 School of Business 3 School of Engineering 5 School School of Computing and Information Technology 3 Language Centre 6 Centre of Excellence for Pre-University Studies 13 The lecturers views for each factor in the questionnaire were analyzed descriptively. The means and standard deviations for each of the six factors were calculated for all the 30 lecturer respondents and the results are shown in Table 3. Since the questionnaire used the scale of 1=Strongly Disagree and 5=Strongly Agree, a high mean score would indicate a positive stance of the lecturers. Among the six factors the course content factor had the highest mean score at 4.19, while website accessibility, security and support factor had the lowest, which was at Therefore, it can be surmised that the lecturers in general were satisfied with all the six factors related to the online courses. 70

6 Table 3: Means and standard deviations for each factor Factor N M SD Course content Course organization Assessment and 30 evaluation of student learning Website accessibility, 30 security and support Interactive learning 30 environment Institution commitment The views of the lecturers, separated according to gender, were also analyzed. The means and standard deviations of the participants selected answers for each factor are given in Table 4. Table 4: Means and standard deviations for each factor, according to lecturers gender Male Female Factor M SD M SD Course content Course organization Assessment and evaluation of student learning Website accessibility, security and support Interactive learning environment Institution commitment When the mean scores, taken from Table 4 above, for each factor according to gender are depicted in a graph format (Figure 1), it can be clearly seen that there was no big difference in the mean scores between males and females for the first three factors. This meant that males and females had similar opinions of the online courses where these factors are concerned. The other three factors, on the other hand, showed female lecturers having much lower mean scores than their male counterparts. These three factors were website accessibility, security and support, interactive learning environment, and institution commitment. This meant that female lecturers were less satisfied with these three factors compared to their male colleagues. Moreover, website accessibility, security and support 71

7 factor showed the biggest disparity between these two groups of lecturers, with females getting a mean score of 3.59 and males Male Female Figure 1: Mean scores for each factor, by gender The questionnaire responses of the participants, grouped according to their years of teaching experience, were analyzed. Figure 2 shows the mean scores in each group of participants for the six factors. A noticeable trend in Figure 2 is that respondents with the most years of teaching experience, i.e., more than 10 years, were the most satisfied with the online courses for all six factors, except for website accessibility, security and support factor, when compared to the other two groups of respondents, namely, those with 6-10 years and 1-5 years of teaching experience. For the website accessibility, security and support factor, the most experienced lecturers were the least satisfied. 72

8 years 6-10 years > 10 years Figure 2: Mean scores for each factor, by years of teaching experience The mean scores of the responses of the lecturers, separated according to the schools they are in, were calculated and these are shown in Figure 3 below. It is evident from Figure 3 that the School of Business had the highest mean scores for all six factors. In other words, the respondents from this school felt the most positive about the online courses with regard to the six factors. On the other hand, the lowest mean scores for all the factors were from the School of Engineering. This implied the respondents from this school, as compared to those from the other schools, were consistently the least satisfied with the online courses they have gone through where all these six factors are concerned. 73

9 Institution commitment Interactive learning environment Website accessibility, security and support Assessment and evaluation of student learning Course organization Centre of Excellence for Pre-University Studies Language Centre School of Computing & Information Technology School of Engineering School of Business Course content Figure 3: Mean scores for each factor, by schools CONCLUSION From this small scale study that was carried out, it can be concluded that the academic staff members at this Laureate International Universities member institution were generally satisfied with the quality of its in-house online courses in relation to the six factors. With regard to the influence of gender, years of teaching experience, and the school the lecturers were working in, only three factors were seen to have a perceptible difference between the male and female lecturers. The three factors were website accessibility, security and support, interactive learning environment, and institution commitment, with the females perceiving them less favourably. Lecturers with more than 10 years of teaching experience, compared to their younger counterparts, were the most satisfied with the quality of the online courses, with the exception of website accessibility, security and support factor. Finally, the academic staff members from the School of Business were the most affirmative about the online courses in all the six factors, unlike those from the School of Engineering who were the least positive. 74

10 REFERENCES Ally, M Foundations of educational theory for online learning IN: Anderson, T. (ed.) Theory and practice of online learning. 2 nd ed. Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, pp Goi, C.L. and Ng, P.Y E learning in Malaysia: Success Factors in Implementing E learning Program. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 20(2), pp Laureate International Universities Laureate International Universities [Online]. Available from: [Accessed 26 October 2012]. Volery, T. and Lord, D Critical success factors in online education. International Journal of Educational Management, 14(5), pp Zhang, P. and von Dran, G.M User expectations and rankings of quality factors in different web site domains. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 6(2), pp Presentation of this paper at the Asian Conference on Education 2012 was funded by Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia. 75

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