Online Teaching Satisfaction and Improvement Strategies Based on the IPA Model: A Case Study of Modern Educational Technology Course ()
1. Introduction
As of July 2022, significant achievements have been made in China’s fight against COVID-19, but the fight against COVID-19 will not be completely over for a period of time in the future (Li, Xu, & Shao, 2022) . In order to effectively prevent the spread of the pandemic and protect the health and safety of teachers, students and staff, universities across the country have successively launched online teaching in accordance with the prevention and control requirements. Wu Yan, director of the Higher Education Department of the Ministry of Education, pointed out that “it is no longer possible for us to return to the state of teaching and learning before the outbreak of the epidemic”. Promoting the high-quality development of online teaching and enhancing the quality of online educational services is increasingly becoming a focus of educational reform. College students directly participate in higher education as consumers of education services and carriers of education quality, and their satisfaction with education has become one of the indicators to evaluate and measure the quality of a school. It is of great practical significance to carry out research on college students’ satisfaction (Yang & Zhang, 2016) . Is the quality of online teaching satisfactory? What are the factors that affect the satisfaction of online teaching, which of these factors need to be maintained and which need to be improved? At present, the common methods involved in the research of online teaching satisfaction include structural equation modeling (SEM), fuzzy comprehensive evaluation, factor analysis and so on. Few scholars have used the importance-performance perception analysis (IPA) to analyze online teaching satisfaction. In this study, IPA analysis was used to examine students’ perception of the importance of online teaching and their satisfaction evaluation, to reveal the factors affecting online teaching satisfaction, to enrich the research content of teaching satisfaction, and to provide theoretical basis and practical guidance for the maintenance and improvement of online teaching in the future.
2. Concept Definition and Research Overview
2.1. IPA Analysis
IPA Analysis, namely, import-performance analysis, obtains customer satisfaction by comparing the difference between the Importance of product or service indicators and the actual Performance perception, so as to determine the priority of improving the factors affecting service quality. As the basis for adjusting the business strategy and improving the efficiency of resource allocation. The IPA analysis chart is divided into four quadrants: the first quadrant is the dominant area with high importance and high satisfaction; The low importance and high satisfaction in the second quadrant was the maintenance area. Quadrant III was a weak area with low importance and low satisfaction (Zeng, 2017) . The general steps for analyzing online teaching satisfaction using the IPA method are as follows: first, the selection of evaluation indicators, and the scores of students’ satisfaction and importance of each evaluation indicator are obtained through questionnaires; Second, with importance as the abscissa and satisfaction as the ordinate, the IP axis was constructed. Thirdly, the mean value of importance and satisfaction was taken as the midpoint to divide the four quadrants of the coordinate axis. Fourth, the position of each evaluation index in the coordinate system was determined according to the score. Fifth, the evaluation indicators were analyzed according to IPA theory, and conclusions and countermeasures were drawn.
2.2. Online Teaching Satisfaction
The concept of teaching satisfaction is based on the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) (Wang, 2018) . Customer satisfaction refers to the subjective evaluation and feeling that customers’ consumption needs are satisfied after purchasing a product or service. Teaching satisfaction refers to students’ experience of teaching and the degree to which learning expectations are met. If learning expectations are met, it will positively promote students’ learning motivation. Online teaching satisfaction refers to the evaluation and level of satisfaction of students on the content, mode, process and quality of teaching, teachers and environment in a wide range of online teaching (Qian, Wang, & Song, 2021) .
2.3. Review of Influencing Factors of Online Teaching Satisfaction
1) Teacher-Related Factors
The roles and expectations of online teachers have also significantly evolved. Teachers have become creators of learning spaces, facilitators of learning processes, excavators of learning resources, leaders of educational technologies, resonators of teaching scenarios, reflectors of classroom effects, service providers of task completion, and evaluators of growth goals (Xia, Li, & Liu, 2021) . According to He, Yang, & Chen (2021) teachers’ attitude positively influences students’ learning experience. Zuo, Zhang, & Li (2021) believe that the improvement of teachers’ teaching skills affects the teaching quality of online open courses and learners’ satisfaction. Li (2016) used structural equation model to find that the teaching ability of teachers and teaching assistants in blended learning environment plays an irreplaceable role in cultivating students’ self-efficacy and is an important factor affecting learning satisfaction. Wang & Yang (2016) believe that teaching style has the most significant influence on teaching satisfaction. Therefore, teachers’ teaching attitude, professional knowledge, teaching methods and organizational ability of online teaching all positively affect the effect of online teaching, and then affect the satisfaction of online teaching.
2) Curriculum-Related Factors
Curriculum is the basic basis for online teaching activities and the main source for students to acquire knowledge. Through structural equation analysis, Eom, Wen, & Ashill (2006) believe that curriculum design has a significant impact on online effective learning. Through investigation, Li (2013) found that curriculum hours and planning reasonably influenced students’ learning satisfaction. Through comparative analysis, Wu, Yu, & Huang (2020) found that course content has a practical impact on students’ learning satisfaction by improving their professional ability. Zhao & Li (2020) constructed the satisfaction equation of college English online teaching and showed that whether college students’ perceived learning experience of online courses had significant effects on the improvement of their English language knowledge and ability which would significantly affect students’ perceived value and indirectly affect students’ satisfaction with the courses. Qin, Li, & Zhou (2020) emphasized that online education should carry out systematic curriculum design according to the theoretical connotation of different disciplines, and different disciplines should adopt targeted and improved teaching organization form, content structure and teaching concept, so as to improve students’ continuous learning willingness and learning satisfaction. Li & Cui (2018) used the binary choice model to find that the course assessment system of economic management majors, including the assessment focus, the sub-score system and the assessment method, affected students’ evaluation of the outcome control link and thus affected students’ satisfaction.
3) Platform-Related Factors
Online teaching platform is the medium to carry out online teaching activities. Xia (2021) believes that students’ perceived usefulness of online teaching platform has a significant positive impact on their willingness to continue using online teaching platform, and the perceived usefulness of teaching platform can indirectly affect their willingness to continue using online teaching platform through subjective norms and satisfaction respectively. Yong (2018) found that students’ information technology skill level, e-learning space system design, e-learning space curriculum design, and e-learning space expansion resources can all positively predict students’ teaching satisfaction.
4) Interaction-Related Factors
From the perspective of information theory, interaction is the two-way information transmission among various elements in the system. The interaction in online teaching should be the interaction between students and teachers, between students and the interaction between students and the content (Wang, Chen, & Anderson, 2014) . The role transformation of teachers and the non-intellectual support of teachers in teaching activities, including interaction, can help learners improve their learning satisfaction (Zhang & Sun, 2022) . Through empirical research, Bowie found that teacher-student interaction is an important factor affecting the development of college students, and student development is significantly correlated with student satisfaction (Bao, 2014) . Guo (2020) pointed out through factor analysis of the interaction between teachers and students in the teaching process, teachers’ teaching preparation, learning time and students’ participation all have different degrees of influence on online teaching satisfaction.
3. Research Design
3.1. Research Methods
Data were collected online through questionnaires, and students who offered modern educational technology courses in the spring semester of 2022 in the author’s university were selected as the research objects. The importance of the questionnaire was evaluated based on a 5-point Likert scale (1 was “very unimportant”, 5 was “very important”), and the satisfaction was evaluated (1 was “very dissatisfied”, 5 was “very satisfied”). The first part of the questionnaire was based on demographic characteristics such as gender, major, online teaching method, and online teaching platform. In the second part of the questionnaire, 20 items were set to measure the importance and satisfaction of each factor index. A total of 226 online questionnaires were received by random sampling. After removing the invalid questionnaires with more than 2 missing items, obvious question answering rules and short total answer time, 203 valid questionnaire samples were left.
SPSSPRO, an online statistical analysis software, was used to analyze students’ perception of importance and satisfaction through descriptive statistical analysis, mean and standard deviation. The means of the 20 examined feature items were mapped to the IPA chart in the form of coordinates, and the IPA quadrant chart was drawn. The results were analyzed and discussed using the importance-performance model.
3.2. Evaluation Index System
Based on the outstanding problems existing in online teaching, literature research results and expert interviews, the evaluation index system of students’ satisfaction with online teaching is preliminarily designed. Then, the index system is adjusted and improved through pre-survey. Finally, four dimension factors with a total of 20 index items are determined, as shown in Table 1.
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Table 1. Evaluation index of online teaching satisfaction.
4. Research Results
4.1. Descriptive Statistical Analysis
Firstly, the reliability of the questionnaire data was analyzed, and Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was >0.95, indicating that the reliability of the questionnaire was high. Secondly, from the perspective of basic information, the proportion of female subjects in this survey is 60.12%, which is related to the high proportion of female students in normal education majors. From the perspective of teaching methods, 93.64% of the subjects participated in online live teaching; University MOOC and Tencent conference were the main online teaching platforms, accounting for 96.53% and 85.55%, respectively (Table 2).
4.2. Evaluation of the Importance of Online Teaching Satisfaction Index
This study measured the mean and standard deviation of the importance of online teaching satisfaction index, as shown in Table 3. The average importance score of the 20 online teaching satisfaction indicators was 3.84 - 4.41, which reflected that students generally had a high perception of the importance of these indicators, and most of them were between “important” and “very important”. Except for teachers’ live online teaching, the standard deviations of the other 19 indicators were all less than 1, indicating that students’ opinions and attitudes were less biased. The three indexes with the highest average scores were teachers’ teaching attitude (C11), arrangement and effect of practical teaching activities
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Table 2. Basic information of the surveyed students.
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Table 3. Evaluation of students’ satisfaction with online teaching.
(C36), novelty and enrichment of curriculum content (C22), and nature and task of curriculum (C42). The average scores of teachers’ professional knowledge (12) and online learning resources (26) were high, and the standard deviation was small, indicating that students’ recognition was high. Socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, endowing teacher education with new characteristics, new mission and new requirements (Cai & Zhang, 2020) . According to these top indicators, students have higher requirements for teachers’ online teaching activity design, and more urgent expectations for modern educational technology courses to improve their own ability and quality.
4.3. Evaluation and Analysis of Online Teaching Satisfaction
Through the measurement of the learning satisfaction of online teaching students, the measurement results are shown in Table 3. The average score of 20 perceived satisfaction items was 3.93 - 4.51. Compared with the online learning expectations of online teaching students, most of the perceived satisfaction scores were lower, indicating that there were differences in the perceived satisfaction and importance of online teaching factors. According to Table 3, teachers’ professional knowledge (C12), improvement of students’ professional ability by course content (C24), teachers’ teaching attitude (C11), and student-student communication and interaction (C33) are the most prominent items in the evaluation of students’ satisfaction, indicating that teachers have a good teaching attitude. In the process of teaching, teachers can make active and full preparation before class, highlight the key points and difficulties in the teaching process, and students have a good grasp of the degree of learning, and assign corresponding learning tasks after class, so that students have a good experience of online learning. The indicators with low ranking were online learning resources (C26), communication and interaction between teachers and students (C32), online learning resources (C26), and arrangement and effect of experimental teaching activities (C36). At the same time, the standard deviations of these items are high, indicating that there are differences in students’ recognition.
4.4. IPA Analysis of Online Teaching Satisfaction
IPA analysis of the research data showed that the overall mean values of importance and satisfaction were 4.13 and 4.21, respectively, indicating that the overall satisfaction of online teaching was relatively high. With importance as the vertical axis and satisfaction as the horizontal axis, the coordinate system was established, and the mean of importance and satisfaction as the coordinate origin, and the IPA analysis chart of online teaching satisfaction was obtained as shown in Figure 1.
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Figure 1. IPA analysis chart of online teaching satisfaction.
Figure 1 shows that C11, C12, C22, C31, C34 and C15 have 6 variables distributed in quadrant, which is the “Dominant area” with high importance and high satisfaction evaluation. These feature items are teachers’ teaching attitude, teachers’ professional knowledge, curriculum content enrichment and novelty, teachers’ preparation before class and assignment of learning tasks, and teachers’ use of online live teaching. However, considering the mean difference of each observed variable in Table 3, although the above variables are the advantages of online teaching satisfaction, there is still some gap between them and students’ expectations. Although this area belongs to the “continue to maintain” area, The teaching team should not be content with simply maintaining the status quo, and should innovate and develop in the future to give full play to the efficiency and improve the satisfaction of online teaching.
Quadrant II is the “Maintenance area”, which has low importance and high satisfaction evaluation, including C24, C33, and C35, which are the improvement of students’ professional ability by course content, the communication and interaction between students, and the teaching method used in online teaching. For these aspects, although students perceive them as less critical to their online learning experience, the current level of satisfaction is high, suggesting that the status quo can be maintained for the short term.
Quadrant III is the “Improvement area”, which has relatively low importance and satisfaction, including C13, C14, C21, C25, C27, C41 and C42 in this area. Specifically, it is teachers’ teaching language and style, teachers’ online teaching organization ability, textbooks selected for the course, assessment and evaluation methods of the course, teaching platform and related software operation, fluidity and stability of the network environment. The indicators in the region have great room for improvement. Since students do not pay high attention to these variables, they can be improved on the basis of key improvement items.
Quadrant IV is the “Vulnerable area” area, which has high importance but low satisfaction, including C23, C26, C32, and C36 in this area. The details are the task and nature of the course, the online learning resources supporting the course, the communication and interaction between teachers and students, and the arrangement and effect of practical teaching activities. This means that students believe that there are some gaps and deficiencies in the online learning resources, interaction between teachers and students, and experimental teaching links with their expectations or with the task and nature of the course, which should be improved.
5. The Main Problems of Online Teaching
5.1. The Unfinished Construction and Application of Online Teaching Resources
Online teaching resources, such as courses, classes, and courseware, form the foundation of online education. Compared with the traditional centralized classroom learning in schools, the online learning conducted by students at home has the characteristics of development, autonomy, collaboration and delay, which also puts forward higher requirements for the construction of online teaching resources (Zhang, 2020) . Online teaching resources present some diversified characteristics in content and form, but they are mainly PPT, text and teaching video. Although some resources are well constructed, due to various reasons, there are problems such as lag in updating and outdated content, and some online resources are not attractive enough to students. At the same time, due to the large variety and number of various resource platforms, a coexistence and co-prosperity situation is presented, which is distributed in various network platforms, and it appears to be miscellaneous, messy, multi-tasking and with a high repetition rate, which greatly wastes the cost of time and energy for students to find and obtain resources (Chen, 2020) .
As a public course designed for all teacher training students, it fails to provide targeted teaching resources tailored to the students’ majors, such as micro-lesson production and online teaching cases for the Chinese language textbook “Shi Zhi Sai Shang” in the first semester of the eighth grade, for the students in the science normal specialty such as physics, chemistry, such as content of online teaching resources and teaching actual demand derailment, and students’ learning needs derailment. In the interview, some students put forward that “online teaching videos are recorded by multiple teachers, each with a significantly different teaching style. Some present the material in a straightforward manner, while others incorporate humor and wit”. Some students said that “the theoretical content in online teaching videos is delivered in a short time frame with a lot of information, leaving little time for digestion and understanding, which makes it difficult to follow. This is unlike in-person classes where teachers would pause and provide examples during key and challenging parts”, some students said that “some teaching videos can be as short as a few minutes or as long as tens of minutes. When you want to learn in your spare time after class, you are willing to click on the long video to watch”. This reflects the lack of full understanding and grasp of the characteristics of students’ online learning during the construction of online teaching resources, which leads to a large gap in students’ expectations and satisfaction with online learning resources.
5.2. Online Experimental Teaching as a Critical Determinant of Teaching Satisfaction
The modern educational technology course aims to enable normal university students to receive information teaching training in the pre-service stage through course learning, improve their technical literacy, and master the ability of designing, developing and using educational information resources. Experimental teaching is an important way to improve students’ ability. It is natural for students to place high hopes on the arrangement and effect of experimental teaching activities through the learning of curriculum nature and tasks as well as personal understanding. Combined with the interview, there are two main factors that restrict the satisfaction of experimental teaching. The first factor is related to objective limitations. As a result of online teaching concerning the operation of the scanner, multi-function copiers and use, wisdom is recorded and display technology, the operation of the electronic whiteboard and use online experiment link could not be forced to cancel or substitute in the form of lectures. In interviews with students who “have been looking forward that one day the classroom the teacher could take us to the smart class to explore the future technology. However, because of the online teaching, it was cancelled, and they felt a little regretful”. Experiments involving group collaboration, such as micro-class development and animation resource development, are conducted online, which put forward higher requirements for teachers and students’ teaching and learning. Second, there is insufficient experience in online experimental teaching. Some teachers lack experience in organizing online experimental teaching efficiently, and they need to make up for the shortcomings in experimental teaching methods, content, resource selection and application.
5.3. Insufficient Online Teacher-Student Communication and Interaction
Although online teaching breaks through the spatial and temporal limitations of traditional teaching, the information exchange between teachers and students relies more on online teaching platforms and social media. Due to the integration of theory and practice in the curriculum, students need to communicate with teachers before, during and after class about the difficulties encountered in the process of newly learned educational technology theories or experiments. The communication usually relies on WeChat group and QQ group, and the communication between teachers and students is easily disturbed by other information and topics in the group. In particular, some students or old teachers need others’ online assistance when they operate the software, and the communication between teachers and students is often inefficient. Therefore, the online communication between teachers and students poses a higher challenge to the expression ability of students and teachers, as well as the skills and technology of network communication. Because some teachers regard online teaching as a temporary state or transition period, they will ignore the emotional communication between teachers and students and simply complete knowledge transfer. Technically, students’ facial expressions, language and behaviors are easy to be ignored because teachers and students sit apart from each other in online teaching, which leads to students’ boredom, fatigue and alienation, and then affects the effectiveness of students’ online teaching (Tian & Du, 2022) .
6. Improvement Strategies Based on Online Teaching Satisfaction
6.1. Build High-Quality Online Teaching Resources with Multi-Efforts and Multi-Measures
Resources are an essential element throughout the whole process of online teaching, and their construction and application cannot be separated from the participation of all parties. At the school level, we should establish and improve the normal access, monitoring and elimination mechanism of online teaching resources, to strengthen the construction of campus digital resources, and accelerate the integration of teaching platforms. Schools should continue to promote the construction of school-based teaching resources according to their own resource endowment and professional characteristics, use big data technology to integrate all kinds of existing online teaching resources, follow the survival of the fittest rule, discard outdated and backward resources, and integrate advanced and innovative resource. In the process of constructing the course team, it is essential to effectively implement a responsibility system to maintain order and ensure the sustainability of online educational resources. From teachers perspective , firstly, resources should be fully recognized as the basis for students to explore and construct knowledge in online learning, and the importance and particularity of online teaching resources should be recognized, so as to establish correct concepts. Second, theoretical learning and experience exchange related to the construction and application of online educational resources should be carried out regularly. Only by constantly improving their theoretical literacy and resource construction and application ability can teachers effectively use these resources in daily teaching work.
6.2. Integrating Key Points and Skills with a Blend of Virtual and Physical Methods to Enhance Online Experimental Teaching
Online teaching seems to be a response to the epidemic. In essence, it is the adaptation of education to the requirements of the era of mobile Internet and big data, and it is the decomposition and reconstruction of basic elements of teaching after the change of teaching platform. Online experimental teaching should take the initiative to adapt to the changes of The Times and make active adjustments and improvements in various elements. Taking the course of modern educational technology as an example, the main line of training students’ abilities in the design, development, application and evaluation of information should be followed. Teaching resources is grasped, and the original offline relatively independent experimental content is decomposed. Micro-experiments are made according to knowledge points and skill points, which are convenient for students to preview before the experiment and practice after the experiment, and realize a new teaching mode in which students can control the content, method, degree, progress and rhythm of the experiment independently. It is conducive to students to make full and effective use of extracurricular and in-class time, and improve the experimental learning effect. Online teaching based on virtual simulation experiments can effectively break the limitations of physical experiments, including the conditions of site and equipment, and is a popular new teaching model at present. With the support of information technology, online teaching can try to virtualize part of the experiments originally needed to be carried out in the physical environment, create a futuristic curriculum environment, flexibly integrate subject elements, and build a virtual subject laboratory.
6.3. Enhance the Effectiveness and Enthusiasm of Interaction through Multi-Perspective and Collaborative Efforts between Teachers and Students
Interaction is a process of information exchange between teachers and students. Based on methods and skills, the first method is to flexibly play its advantages in exchange and interaction according to the characteristics of the respective network interaction platform. For example, when students encounter difficulties in practice, teachers can set up temporary meeting rooms or groups for two-way video calls or desktop sharing, which can not only avoid interference but also improve the effectiveness of interaction. When discussing and exploring a topic, a discussion thread can be set up for open discussion and free speech. The second is to pay attention to the pertinence of interaction, grasp the learning situation of students through the online teaching platform, carry out personalized interaction for students, and provide individualized learning support. In order to improve the effectiveness of teacher-student interaction from the perspective of ideology and mechanism, it is also necessary to improve students’ learning initiative, help students overcome their own inertia, and encourage students to actively interact with teachers and other students by improving the evaluation system and other measures. From the perspective of sustainability, the teacher should pay attention to the study course and sorted out the common problems of summary, build online knowledge base, guide the student to consult the knowledge base to solve the problem when meeting difficulties. Not only part of the interpersonal interaction can be transferred to people and interactive platform, and more time and energy can be saved for the interaction between teachers and students. Finally, by paying attention to the role of emotional factors in the interaction between teachers and students, teachers can narrow the psychological distance between teachers and students through encouraging words, humorous and kind language, so as to promote students to be more engaged and actively participate in online teaching.
7. Limitations and Prospects
In this study, the IPA analysis method is used to evaluate the importance and performance of a certain index for the same respondent, resulting in the instability of the measurement results, and there may be some difficulties in the application of this method. The data collection of the study is affected by the course opening plan of colleges and universities, and did not cover students of different disciplines such as liberal arts, science, physical education and art. The representativeness of the research data can be further improved.