How Does the Learning Channel Affect Student Satisfaction in Hybrid Courses

Abstract

The traditional instructor-led classroom training has been a dominant training method for millennia. During the past few decades, the information and communications technology have evolved in giant leaps. This has brought new options for providing of and participating in training. Online participation has been found to be a cost-effective way to attend training using standard consumer technology. It allows people to attend to training regardless their physical location, allowing them to deal with the time and cost pressures typically faced in workplaces. But is online participation as effective as classroom training? Previous studies in the higher education sector have demonstrated that the student satisfaction and learning outcomes do not differ between online and classroom participants. However, little is known how does the learning channel affect commercial ICT-training, where typical courses are full-day instructor lead courses lasting one to four days. We studied student satisfaction of a commercial ICT-training provider, which provides hybrid courses having both online and classroom participants. As anticipated, the results show that online participants are not as satisfied with course arrangements as the classroom participants. The most surprising finding is that there is a small, but statistically significant, difference how participants perceive teacher’s substance skills. This suggests that teachers might not be able to share their knowledge online as effectively as in the classroom. The results also provide some techniques and tools which could improve online participants’ satisfaction.