Graduate Students’ Perceptions of Active Learning Activities in a Revised Online Course

Abstract

Distance instruction has a long history in the U. S. higher education. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education institutions worldwide quickly adopted online learning modalities. A student’s feeling of isolation contributes to the high dropout rate in online classrooms. Carefully planning and redesigning online courses could effectively engage students in the course content and prompt active interactions between students and their peers and instructors. This paper presents a mixed-method research study to investigate the effectiveness of a redesigned healthcare administration graduate course online. Quantitative and qualitative data are collected from various sources to triangulate the findings. The findings derived from this study indicate an overall positive view from students toward this revised course integrated with multiple assessment formats. As adult learners, students can gain a solid foundation of knowledge presented in the revised course and apply the knowledge they learned to their jobs. There are some lessons learned for future course revisions in our program that could be empirical evidence for other institutions to implement and better their online courses.