Abstract:

Satisfaction with online learning is a noteworthy aspect of promoting successful educational processes, primarily because students’ satisfaction is positively correlated with academic achievement, and negatively correlated with dropout rates. Due to the COVID-19 virus pandemic, Croatia went into “lockdown”, which lead to an unforeseen shift to online teaching and restricted campus access. Therefore, the primary purpose of this research was to analyze the satisfaction of students with online distance learning, on a convenient sample of 147 students from the University of Zadar, during the summer semester of the 2020/2021 academic year. For this purpose, an ad-hoc Satisfaction Questionnaire was constructed and distributed online. The questionnaire included quantitative questions about the general satisfaction of students with online learning, satisfaction with published teaching content, and perceived advantages and disadvantages of online learning. The questionnaire used a five-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). In general, students showed moderate satisfaction with online learning (M=3.18, SD=0.38). The research also examined possible differences in satisfaction with online learning in regard to the year of the study that students attended during the research. It was found that students didn’t differ in general satisfaction with online learning, however, lower-year students were more satisfied with published teaching content than the upper-year students (p < .05) while upper-year students perceived fewer disadvantages related to online learning from lower-year students (p < .05). Students’ learning contexts may influence their learning beliefs and academic outcomes which means that students struck by the COVID-19 pandemic may be at risk of negative impacts on their self-efficacy. That’s why the second goal of this research was to check whether students differed in general self-efficacy in regard to the year of the study program they attended during the research. Upper-year students reported greater levels of self-efficacy than the lower-year students (p < .05). Finally, the third aim of this study was to check whether the year of the study students attended during the research moderates the relationship between self-efficacy and general satisfaction with online learning. The study found a significant interaction effect between the year of the study and self-efficacy, which accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in students’ satisfaction with online learning (ΔR2 = .03, p < .05). Examination of the interaction plot showed that as self-efficacy increased, the satisfaction with online learning increased. Moreover, lower-year students with high self-efficacy levels showed the highest satisfaction with online learning during the pandemic.

Keywords:

COVID-19, online learning, technology, satisfaction, self-efficacy, students.