Abstract:

Traditionally, one of the most frequently used Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in universities and business schools (BS) has been student satisfaction. This indicator is an important governance input since BS use it to assess the performance of their lecturers and the quality of their programs (Kameas, 2006), which consequently has a direct impact in their reputation.

In order to maximize student satisfaction of a higher education course, it is necessary to know which have the key factors that lead to that maximum. In the literature related to student satisfaction, several authors have explored the key factors that influence it (e.g., DeShields, Kara, & Kaynak, 2005). However, most of these papers develop their studies in the context of face-to-face methodology and there is scarce literature that explores these key factors in the context of online education (e.g., Bolliger, 2004). In that sense, there is still a need to further study this topic, especially for post-graduate online management programs.

The paper performs a systematic literature review, as a first step in the development of a PhD thesis on student satisfaction in the context of higher education (HE), and is to be considered under the Edulearn topic of Learning Experiences in Higher and Further Education. The objective of this PhD thesis is to identify the most relevant factors affecting student satisfaction in the context of HE, considering both which have face-to-face and online learning environments.

The database considered for this literature review is Scopus and the selected search keywords are:
- “student satisfaction” AND “higher education”
- “student satisfaction” AND “university education”
- “student satisfaction” AND “tertiary education”
As a result of the keyword search, 552 papers were identified.

By eliminating duplicates and applying the following exclusion criteria:
- Date: 2010-2016
- Language: only English
- Document type: only articles, articles in press and reviews
The number of remaining papers was 443. From those, only 231 have been considered relevant to the thesis.

Concerning discipline, most of the papers (178) do not specify any or are multidisciplinary. Only 26 papers involve social sciences (19 of which come from business programs). As far as learning methodology is concerned, 202 papers refer to a face-to-face format and only 29 refer to online or blended formats.
Splitting by region, 49 countries are represented, being UK the most frequent one (15 papers), followed by Spain (11) and Australia (9).

At this stage, we are analyzing in depth the identified papers to build an agenda for further research on the topic.

References:
[1] Bolliger, D. U. (2004). Key Factors for Determining Student Satisfaction in Online Courses. International Journal on E-Learning, 3(1), 61–67. Retrieved from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/2226
[2] DeShields, O. W., Kara, A., & Kaynak, E. (2005). Determinants of business student satisfaction and retention in higher education: applying Herzberg’s two‐factor theory. International Journal of Educational Management, 19(2), 128–139. https://doi.org/10.1108/09513540510582426
[3] Kameas, H. D. A. (2006). Quality Assurance in Education Article information : Quality Assurance in Education, 14(3), 251–267. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/QAE-11-2012-0046

Keywords:

Student satisfaction, higher education, business, online learning.