Abstract:
Purpose: Even though education is a one of the precious assets of a country, the
COVID-19 outbreak has caused to close higher education institutes for a long period
of time. This new normality mandated to conduct teaching and learning activities
through online methods without interrupting education. In this context, a satisfaction
difference can be observed between physical and online learning among many Sri
Lankan university students who used to physical lectures. Therefore, this study
intends to investigate the impact of Self- efficacy, learner-content interaction,
learner – instructor interaction and learner-learner interaction on student
satisfaction within online learning environment.
Method: This was a quantitative study conducted using 380 management
undergraduates from University of Sri Jayewardenepura, University of Colombo,
and University of Kelaniya. Electronically constructed questionnaire was used to
collect information consisted with three parts and total of 37 items by using 5 items
Likert scale. Finally, the collected data was analyzed using multiple regression
analysis and tested 4 hypotheses developed.
Findings: This study found that online learning self-efficacy, learner-content
interaction, and learner-learner interaction have significant influence on student
satisfaction in online learning environment. As opposed to this, learner – instructor
interaction had no significant influence on student satisfaction.
Implications: The results indicat that mainly universities will be able to build
effective and innovative lecture delivery process, develop new methods and
standards for online learning resulting in a quality higher education system in Sri
Lanka.
Future Research: The study has considered only the impact of self-efficacy and
interactors on student satisfaction in online learning. There can be other variables
too. The study is limited to the Western Province Universities. Thus, these findings
can be varied in other Universities. Then future researches can be conducted by
using other variables and different contexts.
