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Volume 2 No.

1 ISSN 2079-8407
Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

©2010-11 CIS Journal. All rights reserved.

http://www.cisjournal.org

Learner satisfaction for a hybrid course in probability


Amir T. Payandeh Najafabadi
Department of Mathematical Sciences,
Shahid Beheshti University, G.C.
Evin, 1983963113, Tehran, Iran
amirtpayandeh@sbu.ac.ir

Maryam Omidi Najafabadi,


Department of Agricultural Education and Extension, Science and
Research branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
m.omidi@srbiau.ac.ir

ABSTRACT

Success of any training system is based on satisfaction of the user and factors affecting this satisfaction. This article studies
satisfaction of a hybrid training system (which is a combination of e-learning and traditional training systems) for
Probability and Statistics for Engineers at Shahid Behashti University in Iran. Using the related literature, this article
derives a model for factors which impact on learner satisfaction in the hybrid training system. Validation of the model is
verified using the Bayesian Structural Equation Modeling. The findings state that Perceived usefulness and Course
flexibility are factors which provide more positive effect on the course satisfaction. While Attitude toward e-learning,
Computer anxiety, and Perceived interactions with others are factors which provide negative effect on the course
satisfaction. Several suggestions based upon the results have been given.

Keywords: e-learning; student satisfaction; Bayesian Structural Equation Modeling.

1. INTRODUCTION multivariate calculus, differential equations) transform an


interesting course to a difficult one. Many instructors and
Traditional face-to-face learning system, authors believe that mathematics and statistics are such
typically, occurs in a teacher-directed environment with subjects which need a face-to-face training system and
interpersonal interaction in a live synchronous cannot be taught, completely, by an online training system
environment. This learning environment is costly with less (Broadbent, 2001 and Chapnick, 2000). Sands (2002)
access flexibility. On the other hand, the electronic described how one may integrate online activities with
learning (e-learning) environments that have grown and classroom work to obtain a successful hybrid course. To
expanded dramatically as a new technology which overcome such barriers and limitations, Payandeh &
expands the possibilities for communication, interaction Omidi (2010) suggested a hybrid training system for the
and multimedia input has many limitations and suffers course, which (i) the course contents teach in a face-to-
from a lack of social interaction between learners and face environment (on-site part); (ii) Class materials, in
instructors (Wu et al. 2008). The hybrid training system is some interactive slides, companies with some new
a solution for such barriers of both traditional and e- examples and more advanced materials teach in an online
learning systems. Roughly speaking, a hybrid training environment (online part); (iii) student will be evaluated
system refers to training system which combines face-to- using the regular midterm(s), final exam (which take in the
face classroom instruction with some elements of an traditional manner), and several quizzes and assignments
online system. In recent years, the hybrid course has (which take using the online environment). Readiness of
become a part of the educational landscape. The goal of such hybrid training system have been studied by
hybrid courses is to join the best features of in-class Payandeh & Omidi (2010).
teaching with the best features of online learning to This article, using the related literature, derives several
promote active independent learning and reduce class factors which can effect on learners satisfaction of the
seating time (Garnham & Kaleta, 2002). Moreover, hybrid training system. Then, it employs the Bayesian
Arbaugh (2000) pointed out that hybrid courses may be Structural Equation Modeling to measure effect of such
accompanied benefits of both on-site and e-learning factors on the students' satisfaction.
techniques to reduce disadvantages of both techniques. To
have a successful hybrid course, an instructor must invest 2. VARIABLES AND THEORETICAL
significant time and effort in redesigning a traditional FRAMEWORK
course. Since, online activities require special abilities,
equipments, etc. of learners. Anderson (1973) defined satisfaction as an ex-
Probability and Statistics for Engineers is one of the post evaluation of consumers' initial (trial) experience with
challenging courses for both instructors and students in the service, and is captured as a positive feeling
engineering. Overloading of the course content, time (satisfaction), indifference, or negative feeling
limitation, and simultaneous offering the course with (dissatisfaction). Therefore, a consumer satisfies whenever
several difficult courses (such as fundamental of physics, his affect from his experience fit with his expectation. The
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Volume 2 No. 1 ISSN 2079-8407
Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

©2010-11 CIS Journal. All rights reserved.

http://www.cisjournal.org
satisfaction comes after the use. Later, Internet was increase learner and instructor satisfaction. This
responsible from the apparition of a new concept ``e- factor includes variables: `taking the course in
satisfaction''. Hise & Szymanski (2000) defined e- this manner' allow me to arrange my class work
satisfaction as the consumers'
more effectively, have more advantage compare
to the traditional manner, have less disadvantage
 Attitude toward e-learning, say :
compare to the traditional manner, and allow me
Arbaugh (2002) and Hong et al. (2002) pointed
out, a student who has a positive viewpoint about to arrange my schedule more effectively, say
e-learning. He participates in an online course, respectively
effectively. This factor contains variables: `I  Course's quality, say : Piccoli et al.
believe that working with computer is' difficult, (2001) emphasized quality of course content as
complicated, required technical ability,
appropriated only for patient users, and an important attribute that leads students'
appropriated only for young people, say satisfaction and consequently a successful
respectively outcome for an e-learning training system. This
 Computer anxiety, say : Piccoli et al. factor includes variable: conducting the course in
(2001) pointed out, users' proficiency and their this manner improved the course's quality, say
attitude towards computer may effect, positively, .
on their e-satisfaction. This factor includes  Technology quality, say : Technical
variables: `working with computer makes me'
attributes affect, positively, students' satisfaction
nervous, uncomfortable, and confused say
respectively (Webster & Hackley, 1997). This factor includes
variables: `I feel the information technologies
 Self-efficacy, say : Joo et al. (2000),
used in the course are easy to' use and obtain, say
Thompson et al. (2002) defined self-efficacy as
learners' ability to evaluate their ability in using respectively .
Internet to perform activities related to e-  Internet quality, say : This factor
Learning. Moreover, they indicated such factor as includes variables: `I feel satisfied with' the speed
an important factor which may effect, positively,
on the Internet and the cost of the Internet, say
on learner satisfaction. This factor includes
variables: `I feel confident to' work with internet, respectively .
download/upload my necessary files from the  Perceived usefulness, say : Chiu et al.
web, and googling the web, say respectively (2005) defined perceived usefulness is ``the
degree that a person believes using a particular
 In-time response from instructors, say system would enhance his/her job performance''.
: Soon et al. (2000) Arbaugh (2002), Also they pointed positive effect of such factor
Chickring & Gamson (1987), Ryan et al. (1999), on learner satisfaction. This factor includes
and Thurmond et al. (2002) are authors who variable: `using this training system improves my
pointed out in time response of instructors' may performance in the course,' say .
effect, negatively, on learner's satisfaction. This  Perceived ease of use, say : Perceived
factor includes variable: `my instructor sends my ease of use is ``the degree that a person believes
comments, assignments, tests, etc on time,' say using a particular system would be free of effort''
. (Davis, 1989). Such factor may impact,
 Attitude toward of instructors?, say positively, on learner satisfaction. This factor
: Webster & Hackley (1997) and Piccoli et al. includes variables: `I is easy for me to' become
(2001) found out that, instructors' attitudes skillful at using the course's environment, get the
toward e-Learning or IT may influence, course's requirement, say respectively .
positively, on results of e-Learning. This factor  Diversity in assessment, say :
includes variable: `compared to traditional Thurmond et al. (2002) stated that environmental
course, how useful do you think your instructor variables such as diversity in assessment may
has positive opinion about the course,' say . influence on e-satisfaction. This factor includes
 Course flexibility, say : Arbaugh (2000) variable: `This course offered a variety of ways to
refereed the e-learning's flexibility as the most assess my learning (quizzes, assignments,
attractive feature of an e-learning course. midterms, etc,)' say .
Moreover, he mentioned it as a factor may

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Volume 2 No. 1 ISSN 2079-8407
Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

©2010-11 CIS Journal. All rights reserved.

http://www.cisjournal.org
 Perceived interactions with others, say : the Cronbach's Alpha with a pilot study size 15. The
Arbaugh (2000) and Piccoli et al. (2001) found Cronbach's Alpha exceeded 0.89, which indicates
acceptable reliability of the questionnaire.
out that the more learners perceive interaction
A census study has been conducted to whole of
with others may lead to a higher e-satisfaction. students in the course t Shahid Behashti university in
This factor includes variables: `This training 2010. It leads to N=55 useful questionnaires.
system provides' a more conformable interaction
with other students and instructor compare to the 2-2 Purpose and Objectives
traditional training system and a more
comfortable discussional environment compare to The purpose of this study is to identify a number of
the traditional training system, say respectively factors that represent the relationship among sets of
interrelated variables using structural equation
.
modeling and to examine the contribution of each
This article considered the course satisfaction as a latent factors to the students' satisfaction. The main
variable (or factor) which contains variables: I am satisfied hypothesizes of this study were:
to take the course in this manner, I would glad to take
another course in this manner, I was very satisfied with
this course, and I would like to take all of my courses  : The student's attitude towards e-
using this training system, say respectively. learning does not influence on their the
According to the above review of literature, the following course satisfaction.
theoretical framework, Figure 1, has been developed to  : The computer anxiety of students
indicate effect of 13 latent variables (or factors) doesn't influence on their the course
given the above. satisfaction.
 : Learners' self-efficacy will not
influence on their the course satisfaction.
 : Students' satisfaction is not impacted by
in-time response of instructors.
 : Students' satisfaction is not influenced
by instructor's attitude towards e-learning.
 : Course flexibility does not impact on
students' satisfaction.
 : Quality of the course contents does not
influence on students' satisfaction.
 : Technology quality does not influence
on students' satisfaction.
In Figure 1, `E' represents error term of the structural  : Internet quality does not impact on
equation modeling and and given students' satisfaction.
the above. In structural equation modeling, traditionally,  : Learners perceived usefulness of the e-
one of factor loadings for each latent variables is fixed by
Learning system will not influence on their
1 (and indicated by ) and other factor loadings are
satisfaction.
estimated. indicate factor loadings which
represent relationship among observed variables and latent  : Learner perceived ease of use of the e-
variables and are factor loadings which Learning system will not influence on their
represent relationship among latent variables. Using satisfaction.
one can estimate the percentage of data  : Diversity in assessment will not impact
that described by the structural equation modeling model. on students' satisfaction.
 : Learners perceived interaction with
others will not influence on their satisfaction.
2-1 Measurement Relevant of such characters (or factors) to the course
To collect information, a questionnaire with 40 satisfactions has been explained in Section 2.
questions was designed. The questionnaire includes:
(i) 32 variables given above and (ii) 8
demographical questions. Reliability of self
developed questions in the questionnaire measured by

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Volume 2 No. 1 ISSN 2079-8407
Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

©2010-11 CIS Journal. All rights reserved.

http://www.cisjournal.org
3. METHODOLOGY 4. RESULTS

The Structural equation modeling is a well Table 1 Descriptive statistics for some
known technique which employs to estimate, analyze, and variables in the target population.
test models that specify relationships among (observed
and latent) variables, say, theoretical framework. The term Percent of Level
of ``latent variable models'' refer to classes of hypothetical Variable Mean SD. 1 2
or theoretical variables (constructs) that cannot be Computer 4 2.811 __ __
observed directly, and treat observed variables as usage
indicators of underlying constructs rather than perfectly (daily)/hour
measured representations of these same constructs. The Internet 3.012 4.230 __ __
structural equation modeling models are well recognized usage
as the most important statistical method to establish an (daily)/hour
appropriate model to evaluate a series of simultaneous Gender __ __ Female Male
hypotheses about the impacts of latent variables and (65%) (35%)
observed variables on the other variables (Shipley, 2000). Major __ __ Computer Electronic
Once a theoretical framework has been proposed, it can (40%) (60%)
then be tested against empirical data. The relationships are Having __ Yes No (44%)
described by parameters, say factor loadings, that indicate Laptop __ (56%)
the magnitude of the effect (direct or indirect) that Having an __ __ Yes No (7%)
independent variables (either observed or latent) have on appropriate (93%)
dependent variables (either observed or latent). By personal
enabling the translation of hypothesized relationships into computer
testable mathematical models. Internet __ __ Dial-up ADSL
The usual structural equation modeling employs connection (61%) (5%)
the maximum likelihood (ML) method to estimate at home
unknown parameters. It is well known that the statistical Internet __ __ Wireless Wire
properties of the ML approach are asymptotic (Lehmann connection (60%) (30%)
& Casella, 1998). Therefore, many of properties of the ML at
estimators have been oscillated for small sample size. university
In the context of some basic structural equation
modelings, many studies have been devoted to study the
behaviors of the ML asymptotic properties with small As Table 1 shows: 65% of respondences are female; most
sample sizes, see Lee (2007) for an excellent review. It of students have an appropriate PC to have an internet
was concluded by such researches that the properties of connection at home. Also, the above table respects the fact
the statistics are not robust for small sample sizes, even for that the most of students have a comfortable internet
the multivariate normal distribution. The Bayesian connection at university.
approach to the structural equation modeling has ability: To implement the Bayesian structural equation
(i) to work properly for small sample size. Even small modeling analysis to test the above theoretical framework
sample size, the posterior distributions of parameters and against collected data, a statistical package, named
latent variables can be estimated by using a sufficiently WinBUGS, has been used. WinBUGS is an open source
large number of observations that are simulated from the and freely available software package, which can be used
posterior distribution of the unknown parameters through to implement Bayesian structural equation modeling
efficient tools in statistical computing such as the various analysis. WinBUGS combines the prior information
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods (Lee, (which summarizes in a prior distribution) with
2007); (ii) to utilize useful and prior information about the observation and derives a distribution for factor loadings.
problem (which translated to a prior distribution) to This approach to factor loading provides more information
achieve better results. For situations without accurate prior about factor loading compare to other classical structural
information, some type of non-informative prior equation modeling approaches. More precisely, one can
distributions can be used. In these cases, the accuracy of estimate mean, variance, and credible interval for mean of
the Bayesian estimates is close to that obtained from the factor loadings. Therefore, hypothesis reject in
classical structural equation modeling (Robert, 2001); (iii) favor of hypothesis at significant level
to treat the discrete variables (such as the Likert and rating whenever zero falls in the credible interval of
scales) as the hidden continuous normal distribution with a .
specified threshold (or cut point). Clearly, such approach As explained above, all ordinal and observed
provide a powerful tool to analyze the discrete variables variables in this research considered as normally
rather than using spacial, but less powerful, statistical distributed latent variables. Using such approach to ordinal
technique to do so (see Lee, 2007). and observed variables along with the Invert Gamma and
the Invert Wishart priors, which commonly use with
normal distribution (whenever no prior information is
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Volume 2 No. 1 ISSN 2079-8407
Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

©2010-11 CIS Journal. All rights reserved.

http://www.cisjournal.org
available), one can employ the WinBUGS software to test
the theoretical framework given by Figure 1. One can restate the above null hypothesis vs
Analysis described below was run in WinBUGS
for total of 100,000 iterations, which mostly, burn-in about , The new hypothesis will be
10,000 iterations. All model validation criteria such as rejected, at significant level whenever zero falls
MC-error (it should be considerably lower than variance into the 95% credible interval for Using this fact along
for each estimated parameters), autocorrelation functions with the 95% credible intervals, given by Table 2, one can
(it should be approached to zero exponentially for each conclude that all the above null hypotheses to , at
estimated parameters), and kernel density (all estimated significant level will be rejected. Now from the
parameters have to be normally distributed) have been met above observation, the theoretical framework, given by
by the model. To consist on briefness such validity criteria Fig 1, without any change will be confirmed. Moreover,
removed from the article. from Table 2, one can conclude that: (i) Linear
Table 2 represents Bayesian estimation and 95% relationship among the course satisfaction, as an
credible interval for factor loadings of theoretical independent latent variable and other dependent latent
framework presented by Figure 1. variables can be stated as
Table 2: Bayesian estimation and 95%
credible interval for factor loadings.

Factor Estimation 95% Factor Estimation 95%


loading CI loading CI Where error of the above model (i.e., E) is, at most, 0.15.
1.081 0.999, Therefore, about 98.87% of data are described by the
[0.434, [0.369, model; (ii) Perceived usefulness, i.e., and course
1.728] 1.628] flexibility, i.e., provide more positive effect on the
1.084 [0.432, 0.541 [0.054, course satisfaction; (iii) Attitude toward e-learning, i.e.,
1.736] 1.027] computer anxiety, i.e., and perceived interactions
1.163 [0.481, -0.975 [- with others, i.e., provide negative effect on the
1.845] 1.692, course satisfaction. While, other factors provide positive
- impact; (iv) Taking the course in this manner have more
0.259]
advantage compare to the traditional manner, i.e.,
1.025 [0.395, -0.879 [-
and taking the course in this manner have more have less
1.655] 1.615,
- disadvantage compare to the traditional manner, i.e.,
0.142] respectively, provide more positive and indirect impact on
1.295 [0.626, 0.434 [0.262, the course satisfaction; and (v) Working with computer
1.964] 0.606] makes me confused, i.e., and working with computer
1.329 [0.640, 0.698 [0.331, makes me uncomfortable, i.e., respectively, provide
2.018] 1.065] more negative and indirect impact on the course
1.011 [0.380, 0.821 [0.081, satisfaction.
1.642] 1.561]
0.945 [0.347, 0.911 [0.220, 5. Discussion and suggestions
1.544] 1.601]
1.508 [0.738, 0.849 [0.048, From the Bayesian structural equation modeling,
2.278] 1.650] 13 factors are proven to have critical relationships with the
1.386 [0.728, 0.560 [0.172, course satisfaction. More precisely, (i) negative impact of
2.044] 0.948] Attitude toward e-learning, Computer anxiety, and
0.781 [0.267, 0.540 [0.371, Perceived interactions with others on the course
1.294] 0.709] satisfaction have been proven. These observation also
1.048 [0.398, 0.994 [0.219, confirmed by Arbaugh (2000, 2002), Piccoli et al. (2001)
1.698] 1.769] and Hong et al. (2002); (ii) positive impact of Self-
0.687 [0.161, 0.830 [0.063, efficacy, in-time response from instructors,  Attitude
1.214] 1.597] toward of instructors, Course flexibility, Course's quality,
1.166 [0.455, 0.891 [0.105, Technology quality, Internet quality, Perceived usefulness,
1.877] 1.677] Perceived ease of use, and Diversity in assessment on the
1.338 [0.647, -0.228 [- course satisfaction, which verified by Thurmond et al.
2.029] 0.338, (2002), Davis (1989), Chiu et al. (2005), Webster &
- Hackley (1997), Piccoli et al. (2001), among others.
0.118] The findings indicate that perceived usefulness
0.884 [0.193, provides the greatest positive and direct contribution (total
1.576] effect) to learning satisfaction. Therefore, the hybrid
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Volume 2 No. 1 ISSN 2079-8407
Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

©2010-11 CIS Journal. All rights reserved.

http://www.cisjournal.org
training system should provide useful information
promptly so that useful recommendations are rapidly [7] Chiu, C., Hsu, M., Sun, S., Lin, T, & Sun, P.
disseminated or shared with those that need to know. (2005). Usability, quality, value and e-learning
Instructors and learners should promote and create the continuance decisions. Computers & Education,
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gathered elsewhere is required for greater generalization efficacy for self regulated learning, academic self
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Volume 2 No. 1 ISSN 2079-8407
Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences

©2010-11 CIS Journal. All rights reserved.

http://www.cisjournal.org
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