Finding Their Way: Student Perceptions in Navigating Online Course Interfaces

From the outside, Penn State might seem like a single entity offering high-quality e-learning curricula to learners across the globe. On closer inspection, however, online courses within the Penn State system are a diverse collection of offerings with different designs and structures across colleges or departments. How do our online students perceive these divergent course interfaces? Does this diversity of design impact student learning? In this session, we will discuss findings from a survey of nearly 400 online students regarding course structure and the challenges of diverse user interfaces and review the changes we plan to implement based on the results.

OUTCOMES: Learn about online course features that students feel have the greatest impact on their learning experience * Learn how student characteristics impact perceptions of interface differences * Identify key features that could be standardized in online courses