Behavioral Assessment Of Online Education

Abstract

Online education (OE) is an increasingly significant portion of the teaching activities in many institutions. In OE systems, courses are delivered over the Internet using a course web site. Some differences between OE and Face-ToFace (FTF) systems are obvious, most notably the lack of FTF communication, but the impact on the effectiveness of OE due to technological limitations and differences in social awareness and exchange of ideas is less clear. Because of these differences, both teachers and learners may anticipate that the effectiveness and overall quality of OE is inferior to the traditional FTF teaching environments. In order to maximize the effectiveness of OE, there must be a clear understanding of OE environments in terms of their major differences from traditional FTF education, especially with regard to social and psychological dynamics, cognitive processes, and technological elements. This study aims to establish how both users and non-users of OE systems perceive the effectiveness of OE. To achieve this goal, an online questionnaire, developed by the authors, was administered to a random sample of students and instructors. Survey results, major deficiencies, and advantages of current OE systems in cognitive processes, social awareness, and learning experiences are reported in this paper. It is our hope that the findings of this study will help OE developers optimize their systems.