Exploratory Research on Satisfaction Degree in Distance Education

Abstract

In order to solve the education problems caused by teachers and students’ unavoidable absence in school during the COVID-19 pandemic, a series of online education activities were carried out by Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunication in early March. To explore students and teachers’ degree of satisfaction with distance education, this paper investigates multiple dimensions such as students’ degree of satisfaction with teachers, the regional living standard, educational resources and negative factors that reduce the students’ degree of satisfaction, etc. Furthermore, the attitude of teachers toward distance education may be partially reflected by the arrangement of live classes. All of the statistics are analyzed by comparing the distribution of votes. The results show that the degree of satisfaction by students and teachers with distance education is generally high but varies in areas with different living standards. In addition, we find that students are more sensitive to the lack of a learning atmosphere.

1. Introduction

During the COVID-19 pandemic, most universities carried out distance education, which means that students could receive education off campus. Research on students’ satisfaction with distance education can not only indirectly determine the development direction and intensity of this teaching method but also provide suggestions on how to improve the quality and evaluation method of teaching. The sudden outbreak led to the large-scale use of distance education, which fueled the need for investigating satisfaction with distance education.

Students’ satisfaction with distance education also affects the quality of online courses. There are many factors involved in conducting an online course, such as teachers, students, and platforms. Therefore, different mathematical methods are usually used to study the key factors that affect the learner’s satisfaction with distance education in a certain dimension, such as teachers, learning platforms, and curriculum design. This can be found from existing research. Ref. [1] studied teachers’ teaching quality and timely feedback, Ref. [2] researched the ease of use of learning platforms, and Ref. [1] focused on other dimensions that are closely related to students’ satisfaction with distance education. However, the above studies were based on a certain dimension, from which [1,3,4,5] studied specific factors that affect the satisfaction of students. Unfortunately, the percentage of satisfaction with distance education from a multi-dimensional perspective is rarely studied, but a single influencing factor could not reflect the real situation and cause a great prejudice. In addition, students’ satisfaction with distance education should be analyzed using various statistical methods and satisfaction models which have good fitting data and excellent tests; however, the use of these methods is too cumbersome.

In response to the above problems, this paper proposes analyzing data by comparing the distribution of votes. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, distance education has become more and more normal, but are students and teachers satisfied with this kind of education method? Why or why not? How does it compare with offline education? This paper hopes to comprehensively evaluate students’ satisfaction with distance education from multiple dimensions and to explore the key dimensions that affect the degree of satisfaction, which is conducive to later research for further refinement.

The main the contributions of this paper are as follows:

• Explore the key factors affecting students’ satisfaction with distance education from the perspective of teachers, platform dimensions, and local living standards.
• At present, researchers prefer to study the factors that have a positive effect on student satisfaction, while ignoring the factors that have a negative effect on student satisfaction. Therefore, this paper concentrates on research about the negative factors.
• We also analyze the teachers’ acceptance of distance education from the perspective of course format and arrangement.

The content of this paper is organized as following. Section 2 investigates related work regarding students’ satisfaction with distance education. Section 3 describes the data source and the method used to compare the distribution of votes. Section 4 shows the survey data and analysis results. Section 5 summarizes the key factors that influence students’ satisfaction with distance education and provides suggestions for future distance education.

2. Related Work

Studies of satisfaction with distance education mainly study the degree of satisfaction and the influencing factors of teachers and students on distance education. Satisfaction with distance learning includes not only the initial satisfaction with the learning methods but also the degree of satisfaction after receiving that education.

Students’ degree of satisfaction with distance learning is usually analyzed from three dimensions: teachers, learning platforms, and curriculum design in existing literature.

Based on a questionnaire survey, Ref. [3] found that the teacher–student interaction is a factor that affects students’ distance learning satisfaction. From a teacher’s perspective, through a survey of students who participated in the MBA distance education program at Sakaria University in Turkey, Ref. [5] proved that lecturers have an impact on students’ satisfaction with distance education. Ref. [4] proved that teaching quality has an important influence on satisfaction with distance students. Ref. [1] discussed the impact on satisfaction with distance education from the dimensions of the instructor’s understanding of the course, timely feedback, and constructive opinions.

Ref. [6] found that the platform used by distance education is a technical environment that university students rely on for distance learning. Ref. [7] proposed that students’ satisfaction should be improved regarding the learning content, media, course design, system design, technology, and interaction. Ref. [2] analyzed the satisfaction of students about the distance learning platform by extending the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and found that the perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use of the platform, students’ attitudes, and behavioral intentions of the system are factors that impact student satisfaction in the distance learning environment. Ref. [8] investigated the satisfaction of university students with a 3D virtual campus as a distance teaching platform and found that distance teaching can effectively promote the coordination between family, work, and personal life. Ref. [9] designed a non-simultaneous distance instruction system with affective computing and proved that students tend to show higher satisfaction and better learning results using such a system.

In contrast with the traditional face-to-face courses, online courses require more suitable course design. Ref. [10] showed that if online courses are designed with pedagogically sound practices, they can provide the same environment as face-to face courses and achieve similar satisfaction of students. Ref. [11] concluded that the course content and interaction between professors and students perform a significant positive impact on satisfaction. Ref. [12] found that curriculum design and management system are the key factors that affect satisfaction through the quality perception survey of distance students. Refs. [13,14] conducted a distance learning survey on students from specific schools and institutions and found that learning results, evaluations, and curriculum resource materials are influence factors for students’ satisfaction.

In addition to considering multi-dimensional factors, various statistical methods and models, such as correlation analysis method [15], American Customer Satisfaction Index Model (ACSI) [16], and structural equation model (Structural Equation Modeling, SEM) [17], are also used for the analysis and researches of students’ satisfaction with distance education. Ref. [18] indicated that the participation satisfaction is an important part of students’ satisfaction and that there is still much room for improvement to promote scholars’ participation and interaction with students, which are also keys to the success of online courses. Ref. [19] proposed an integrated theoretical framework based on the TAM to study the willingness and acceptance of university students in using distance education. They analyzed the relationship between university students’ intention to use e-learning and selected constructs such as attitude, perceived usefulness, system accessibility, and so on, and they developed a general linear structural model of distance education acceptance of university students.

At present, there are few studies on teachers’ satisfaction with distance education, and most mainly focus on the study of the satisfaction with learning platforms. Ref. [20] constructed a special technology acceptance model to predict the technology acceptance level for pre-service teachers.

To sum up, research on satisfaction with distance education by teachers and students has the following problems: Existing literature usually selects a certain dimension to conduct a study of students’ satisfaction with distance education and rarely integrates multiple dimensions.

There is also a lack of research on teachers’ satisfaction with distance learning. However, the teacher is a key part of the teaching process. If the teachers’ satisfaction with distance learning is low, it inevitably affects the quality of student learning. Therefore, it is also necessary to study the teacher’s satisfaction with distance education.

Most studies focus on positive factors related to satisfaction and pay little attention to the negative factors that lead to a decrease in students’ satisfaction, such as the lack of a learning atmosphere.

The above study did not take into consideration the influence of different population factors on satisfaction, so this paper explores the importance of this factor from a different geographical distribution of the population.

Therefore, this paper analyzes students’ satisfaction with distance education from the aspects of online learning platforms, teaching resources, and teachers’ satisfaction. In view of the teacher dimension, this paper investigates and analyzes the use of teaching resources, after-school guidance, and corrective assignments. At the learning platform, this paper investigates and analyzes the platform’s sense of use and learning effect. Based on the results of the analysis, this paper concludes the key factors that affect students’ satisfaction with distance education. Considering that distance learning can hardly integrate a learning environment the way face-to-face courses do, such as a unified classroom and learning environment, or unexpected network disconnection, possible factors may occur and negatively affect the satisfaction with distance education. This paper not only takes these negative factors into consideration but also studies why students from different groups and different regions show various satisfaction with distance education. At the same time, this paper provides suggestions for improving satisfaction of teachers and students with distance learning in emergencies.

3. Method

3.1. Survey Method

In this paper, a voluntary questionnaire survey was used to study the satisfaction of distance education for undergraduates in Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications. The frequency of teachers using different distance education modes was collected from the Academic Affairs office to study the teachers’ satisfaction with distance education.

3.2. Comparing the Distribution of Votes

We measured the students’ satisfaction by comparing the distribution of votes and divided the result into satisfaction and dissatisfaction. As for question with options–Quite Satisfied, Satisfied, Unsatisfied, and Quite Unsatisfied—students selecting the first two options were regarded as being satisfied and the others were regarded as being unsatisfied. Similarly, we considered some options selected by students as being satisfaction options, which indicates that the students were satisfied with the subject of the question, and other options were regarded as dissatisfaction options, which indicate the students were unsatisfied with the subject of the question.

After the calculations, we determined how many students selected the satisfaction options or the dissatisfaction options and then compared the number of students selecting the satisfaction options and the dissatisfaction options to determine the students’ satisfaction with education. All of the options were tagged with a satisfaction option or a dissatisfaction option, as shown in

Table 1. Questionnaire questions.

Dimension	Question
Teacher	1. When you study online, are you satisfied with your teacher’s teaching?
	A. Satisfied with all teachers (Satisfaction option)
	B. Satisfied with the majority of the teachers (Satisfaction option)
	C. Satisfied with the minority of the teachers (Dissatisfaction option)
	2. What do the teachers do in using teaching resources reasonably to complete teaching tasks?
	A. Quite Satisfied (Satisfaction option)
	B. Satisfied (Satisfaction option)
	C. Unsatisfied (Dissatisfaction option)
	D. Quite Unsatisfied (Dissatisfaction option)
	3. How do you feel about the instructor’s learning guidance and answering questions?
	A. Quite Satisfied (Satisfaction option)
	B. Satisfied (Satisfaction option)
	C. Normal (Satisfaction option)
	D. Unsatisfied (Dissatisfaction option)
	E. Quite Unsatisfied (dissatisfaction option)
	4. How do you feel about the instructor’s correction of homework?
	A. Quite Satisfied (Satisfaction option)
	B. Satisfied (Satisfaction option)
	C. Normal (Satisfaction option)
	D. Unsatisfied (Dissatisfaction option)
	E. Quite Unsatisfied (Dissatisfaction option)
Study Platform	5. How do you feel about using the teaching platform?
	A. Quite Satisfied (Satisfaction option)
	B. Satisfied (Satisfaction option)
	C. Normal (Satisfaction option)
	D. Unsatisfied (Dissatisfaction option)
	E. Quite Unsatisfied (Dissatisfaction option)
	6. Which one do you think is better, distance education at home or traditional classroom teaching?
	A. Distance Education (Satisfaction option)
	B. Both (Satisfaction option)
	C. Traditional (Dissatisfaction option)
Study Platform	7. What do you think is the biggest disadvantage of distance education
	A. Lack of learning atmosphere, more likely to be boring
	B. can’t communicate face-to-face with teachers
	C. Network stuttering affects class experience
	D. None

.

We proposed setting a satisfaction ratio to measure if students were satisfied with something for every question. As we can see in Equation (1), SP refer to the satisfaction ratio for a single question, S is the number of students selecting the satisfaction options, and NS is the number of students voting for the question.

$$SatisfactionPercentage\left(SP\right)=S/NS$$

(1)

In order to understand students’ whole satisfaction with distance education, we proposed using the average of the satisfaction ratio to measure the students’ satisfaction. As we can see in Equation (2), ASP refers to the average of the satisfaction ratio, SSP refers to the sum of all questions’ SP, and NQ refers to the number of questions.

$$AverageoftheSatisfactionPercentage\left(ASP\right)=SSP/NQ$$

(2)

From Equations (1) and (2), we know that the higher SP or ASP is, the more satisfaction the students feel, and we think that students are dissatisfied the distance education when ASP is lower than 0.5 because that means most of the students tend to be unsatisfied with distance education.

4. Data Collection

4.1. Data Source

The students’ participating in the questionnaire investigation included students from their freshmen years to their senior years and from majors covering engineering, science, liberal arts, economics and management, and arts. A total of 2512 questionnaires were sent to students, and 2512 were recovered. The questionnaire recovery rate was 100%, and the validity rate was 100%.

In addition, we invited the teachers from the school’s Academic Affairs department to count the frequency of using different teaching modes for distant teaching, including live class, recording class, and online discussion, etc. for 1114 courses at the school.

4.2. Question Setting

In order to obtain distribution information on the student sample, the questionnaire first counted information about the student’s living area, grade, and major.

The questionnaire included seven questions. The design of the first six questions is mainly based on the two dimensions of teachers and learning platforms, as shown in Table 1. In the teacher dimension, the authors believe that, in the process of distance learning, satisfaction with distance education is influenced by students’ satisfaction with the teachers’ quality, use of teaching resources, after-school guidance, and corrective assignments; for learning platforms, this paper believes that students’ satisfaction with distance education is affected by the platform’s sense of use and learning effect. This paper divides the options into satisfaction options and dissatisfaction options, as shown in Table 1.

Finally, the questionnaire provides three negative factors that may affect students’ satisfaction with distance education to investigate the biggest shortcomings of distance education.

4.3. Rationality of the Question and Score Setting

When setting up the questionnaire, we started with both the teacher and the study environment because they are what students are most exposed to when students are studying and they have the greatest impact on the students.

The teacher has the deepest impact on students because of their direct interaction, so we set many questions for the teacher. Teaching resources, teachers’ answers to questions, and the degree of satisfaction with the homework are the main ways for teachers to interact with their students, so starting from these three aspects, we can obtain the student’s satisfaction with the teacher. One of the environments that students could interact with in the distance education is the platform and its an abstract concept, which is difficult to measure. Therefore, we can only directly ask students about their feelings regarding the platform in an abstract-to-abstract way. Therefore, when setting the questions according to the above principles, we covered almost all of the elements affecting students’ satisfaction with distance education.

5. Results and Discussion

5.1. Students’ Satisfaction with Teachers and Learning Platforms

According to the questions set in Table 1, students’ satisfaction with different aspects of teachers and learning platforms was counted. Figure 1 shows students’ satisfaction with teachers:

• As shown in Figure 1a, for satisfaction with teaching quality, 1362 people voted for satisfied with all teachers, 1028 people voted for satisfied with most teachers, and 122 people voted for satisfied with a few teachers, accounting for 54.2%, 40.9%, and 4.9% of the total, respectively;
• As shown in Figure 1b, for satisfaction with the use of resources, 1866 people voted for quite satisfied, 520 people voted for satisfied, 90 people voted for dissatisfied, and 36 people voted for quite dissatisfied, accounting for 74.3%, 20.7%, 3.6%, and 1.4% of the population, respectively;
• As shown in Figure 1c, for satisfaction with the teachers’ guidance, 1338 people voted for quite satisfied, 928 voted for satisfied, 206 voted for normal, 19 voted for dissatisfied, and 21 voted for quite dissatisfied, accounting for 53.3%, 36.9%, 8.2%, 0.8%, and 0.8% of the total, respectively;
• As shown in Figure 1d, for satisfaction with correcting homework, 1390 people voted for quite satisfied, 857 voted for satisfied, 227 voted for normal, 24 voted for dissatisfied, 14 voted for quite dissatisfied, accounting for 55.3%, 34.1%, 9.0%, 1.0% and 0.6% of the total, respectively.

The students’ satisfaction with the learning platform is shown in Figure 2:

• As shown in Figure 2a, for the satisfaction with the platform, 777 people voted for quite satisfied, 1026 people voted for satisfied, 563 people voted for normal, 76 people voted for dissatisfied, and 70 people voted for quite dissatisfied, accounting for 30.9%, 40.8%, 22.4%, 3.0%, and 2.8% of the total, respectively;
• As shown in Figure 2b, for the comparison of distance education at home and traditional classroom teaching, 265 of students think that distance education at home is better, 1249 think that each has its own advantages, and 998 traditional classroom teaching is better, accounting for 23.8%, 52.6%, and 23.6% of the total number, respectively.

As shown in

Table 2. Satisfaction ratio for all of the questions.

Question	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4	Q5	Q6	ASP
SP	0.9514	0.9498	0.9841	0.8495	0.9419	0.6027	0.8799

, satisfaction with teachers and learning platforms can be obtained. According to Equation (2) and Table 2, students’ ASP is 0.8799, which means that students are satisfied with distance education because ASP is far greater than 0.5.

As shown in Table 2. Among them, teachers’ guidance and answering questions obtained the highest SP, with an SP of 0.9841, reflecting students’ high satisfaction with this, indicating that this is a key factor that affects students’ satisfaction with distance education.

5.2. The Relationship between Students’ Distribution and Satisfaction

5.2.1. Distribution of Living Areas

Generally speaking, regional environment and economic level also affect the students’ acceptance of some novel things, and hence, we surveyed the students from different areas with different economic levels. From the perspective of regional economic level, 1537 people came from economically developed areas, such as Jiangsu, Beijing and Shanghai; 576 people came from economically medium areas such as Sichuan and Hunan; and 528 people came from economically disadvantaged areas such as Gansu and Guizhou. As shown in

Table 3. Satisfaction scores in different living standards.

Living Standard	High	Medium	Low
ASP	0.9562	0.8813	0.8786

, their satisfaction ratios are 0.9562, 0.8813, and 0.8786, respectively. Students living in economically disadvantaged areas tend to experience worse educational environments and commonly have lower expectations for distance education, and hence, they cannot easily accept distance learning. In addition, it can be seen that students from economically developed areas have higher satisfaction with distance learning. Certainly, the influence of living areas may be very small for students’ satisfaction, and the living standards of each student are not consistent. Therefore, we will make more detailed considerations for the analysis of the influences of living areas in the future.

5.2.2. Distribution of the Grades

Among the students surveyed, there were 1672 freshmen, 373 sophomores, 459 juniors, and 8 seniors, accounting for 66.4%, 14.4%, 18.3%, and 0.3% of the sample, respectively. Freshmen students were the main subjects of the investigation. As shown in

Table 4. Satisfaction ratio for different grades.

Grade	Freshmen	Sophomore	Junior	Senior
ASP	0.8908	0.8762	0.8784	0.7083

, the final statistics show that the satisfaction ratios of the four grades from freshman to senior were 0.8908, 0.8762, 0.8784, and 0.7083, which shows that the freshmen have the highest satisfaction with distance education. The younger the students surveyed, the higher their satisfaction, indicating that age is a key factor affecting satisfaction with distance education.

5.2.3. Distribution of the Major

Among the majors, the number of students in engineering, science, liberal arts, economics and management, and arts were 1443, 462, 137, 437, and 33, respectively, accounting for 57.4%, 18.4%, 5.4%, 17.4%, and 1.3% of the total number, respectively. It is roughly consistent with the proportion of the number of students in Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications. Since Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications is a university with engineering as its main area of study, students majoring in science and engineering are the main subjects of the survey. As shown in

Table 5. Satisfaction ratio for each major.

Major	Engineering	Science	Liberal	Economic	Arts
ASP	0.8928	0.8853	0.8565	0.8757	0.8536

, the final statistics show that the satisfaction ratio of students in engineering, science, liberal arts, economics and management, and art are 0.8928, 0.8853, 0.8565, 0.8757, and 0.8536, and the data reflect the higher satisfaction of science and engineering students with distance education. The statistics indicate that the majors studied by students also have an impact on satisfaction with distance education. The distribution of the grades and majors of students can be seen in Figure 3.

5.3. Negative Factors Affecting Satisfaction

As shown in Figure 4, we also set up a question for negative factors. The question asked students what is the biggest challenge for online distance education. Among the answers, 1051 people selected the lack of a learning atmosphere. The number of people choosing the option that distance education prevents them from communicating fully with teachers amounted to 607. After that, 550 and 304 students chose the options that it affects the class experience because of a possible network failure and that distance education has no shortcomings, respectively. Obviously, what can be seen from the statistical results is that the lack of a learning atmosphere is the primary obstacle that hinders most students from receiving distance education and should be paid more attention and overcome.

5.4. Teachers’ Satisfaction with Distance Education

According to the background data from the Academic Affairs office, as shown in

Table 6. Courses offered by teachers.

	All Courses	Live Course	Recording Course	Other Courses
Amount	1114	865	62	187

, the school offers a total of 1114 remote courses in this semester, including 865 live courses, 62 recorded courses, and 187 other courses. Compared with other remote teaching methods, the format of a live course could realize a scenario with real-time interactions between teachers and students. Hence, the format of live courses are accepted by more teachers, which could also be reflected by the number of course arrangements. The highly interactive character makes live courses comparable with face-to-face courses. As shown in

Table 7. The number of courses in the same semester.

	2017	2018	2019	2020
Amount	1653	1754	1798	1114

, although the number of remote courses is declining year by year, which could also indicate that distance education has not been accepted by the masses, live courses still account for more than half of the total in one semester, a phenomenon showing that the format of live courses in the distance education is temporarily recognized by teachers and performs well for students’ satisfaction with teachers.

6. Conclusions

The results of the data show that the students’ distance education satisfaction score is 265.6, and the score is satisfying. While in fact, although our research participants are quite impressive and the survey results have great credibility, all of them could be viewed as a tendency, and we still need further research for more reliability. The use of teaching resources by teachers, the guidance of teachers, and the correction of homework by teachers are areas where students’ satisfaction is high, indicating that these three aspects are key factors affecting student satisfaction. From the perspective of a regional economic level, the higher the economic level, the higher the students’ satisfaction with distance education. From the perspective of students’ ages and majors, the younger the students, the higher their satisfaction of distance education, and science students were the most accepting among all students. The lack of a learning atmosphere is the most important factor hindering students’ satisfaction in distance education, so we can improve students’ satisfaction by improving the learning atmosphere. Finally, from the perspective of courses offered, live courses account for the largest proportion of all courses, which indirectly shows that teachers’ satisfaction with distance education is relatively high.

7. Future Work

Although we have made analyses and conclusions based on our existing investigations, there are still many deficiencies, such as the setting of questions not being detailed and in-depth enough, the lack of auxiliary survey methods, a lack of teachers’ satisfaction, and so on. We need to use some existing research to further improve the methods we used in our survey. For example, Ref. [21] provided a basis for future research on the impact that the COVID-19 situation has had on the educational process and assisted other researchers in establishing an online educational environment. Ref. [22] provided timely research on the impacts of COVID-19 on education systems and reviewed numerous approaches taken by universities in delivering teaching and laboratory practices remotely. The method of word clouds in Ref. [23] can be applied to display students’ assessments, which could be useful when setting some open questions. Therefore, in order to further explore the hot research in distance education, we have summarized some insights for future research:

• We just analyzed the teachers’ satisfaction from a course arrangement. More detailed investigations and analyses need to be further carried out.
• We did not conduct more research and analyses on the family background conditions of each student but only considered the perspective of their regional economic level.
• The problem settings need to be more meticulous and effective, and it would better to use other tools to assist our investigations and analysis.
• There was no strict limit to the number of answers in the questionnaire, so it was necessary to employ a Likert scale [24] in our assessment.