What do students rank as most important online?
Students prioritize a hierarchy of online-course quality factors spanning basic modality, teaching presence, and richer interaction.
Source
Integrating students' perspectives about online learning: a hierarchy of factors
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — Large survey with EFA of student-rated online course quality factors
- N
- N=987 · 987 respondents (~40% of ~2,500 contacted); 397-student pilot
- Population
- University students rating online-course quality priorities
- Outcome
- Hierarchy of online-learning quality factors (modality, teaching presence, interaction)
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What do students rank as most important online?
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Pilot sample of 397 students
The instrument was pilot studied during academic year 2017–18 with a 397 student sample, facilitating an exploratory factor analysis leading to important preliminary findings
Approximately 2500 students contacted
Approximately 2500 students were contacted, with some instructors providing class time to complete the anonymous survey.
What they did
After piloting an instrument, instructors distributed a Qualtrics survey to roughly twenty-five hundred students; nearly a thousand responded. Exploratory factor analysis organised student priorities into a hierarchy of online-learning quality factors grounded in presence and modality literature.
What they found
Students treated some baseline online conditions as near-threshold requirements while weighting teaching presence and interactive features as higher-order quality drivers. Factor means showed clear differentiation among clusters of importance rather than a flat list of preferences.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Self-report importance ratings are not measured learning gains. The sample skews young and comes from courses whose instructors opted into distribution, so priorities may differ elsewhere.
Key terms
- Teaching presence
- The instructor's design, facilitation, and direction that guides cognitive and social processes online.
- Social presence
- Learners' sense of being real people who can relate to others in the online environment.
- Cognitive presence
- The extent to which learners can construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse.
- Basic online modality
- Foundational online course features students expect before higher-order interaction matters.
- Hierarchy of factors
- An ordered set of quality drivers in which some elements act as prerequisites for others.
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Quiz yourself
How many students responded to the main survey?
Common questions
How many students responded?
Nine hundred eighty-seven, about a 40% response rate.
Was the survey instrument piloted?
Yes—with a 397-student pilot facilitating exploratory factor analysis.
Does the study measure grades?
No—it focuses on students' importance ratings of quality factors.
Who was surveyed?
Mostly young students, with 78% under age 30.
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