Abstract:

Extensive research has been conducted on evaluating the quality of asynchronous online learning. However, limited research has focused on assessing the effectiveness synchronous or virtual classrooms. The purpose of the study was to develop a metric to evaluate the quality of virtual learning environments in higher education. Data were collected for one year from 33 graduate-level courses and 403 students. Based on Garrison’s (2011) framework and a review of the literature, three constructs were examined: teacher presence, cognitive presence, and social presence. Internal reliability was high for teacher (r=0.94), cognitive (r=0.93), and social (r=0.93) presence. Face validity was established by eight faculty members. Content validity was confirmed by the literature review, alignment with Garrison’s framework, and student comments. Construct validity for the three proposed constructs was established by a factor analysis. Convergent validity was supported by moderately high correlations among the three constructs. Finally, concurrent validity was reinforced by high correlations among course evaluations and the three constructs evaluated. Overall, the Virtual Learning Scale (VLS) appears to be a reliable and valid measure for assessing the quality of virtual classrooms.

Keywords:

Online learning, synchronous learning, evaluate, scale, quality, distance learning.