This document proposes examining the relationship between students' motivational beliefs, expectations, goals, and their satisfaction with online learning. Specifically, it will analyze how students' self-efficacy beliefs, outcome expectations, and goals in online courses relate to their satisfaction. A mixed methods approach is proposed, using surveys and interviews of graduate students taking fully online courses. The research aims to understand how students perceive their self-efficacy, expectations, and goals, and how these relate to their satisfaction in online learning environments.

1. An analysis of motivational beliefs, expectancies and goals and their impact on learners’
satisfaction in online learning environments in higher education
Online courses differ from traditional courses in the way students are required to be confident in performing technology-based activities.
Students with low level of confidence in online learning might not engage in learning activities, which lead to dissatisfaction in online
learning environments (Kuo, et. al., 2013). Moreover, students with low level of expectations may lead to decreasing level of learning
satisfaction in online learning (Hawkins, 2010). Similarly, goals that students set for themselves can predict students’ satisfaction in online
learning (Locke, and Latham, 2006). This paper proposes a method to examine self-efficacy beliefs, expectancies and goals, and their
relation to learner’ satisfaction in online learning environments in higher education.
Self-efficacy
•Research on Self-efficacy is on its infancy
•Predict student success
•Learners’ efficacy beliefs are directly
related to their academic performance
•People with high learning self efficacy
perform better, are more satisfied with
their performance and they are
committed to change and develop
•Technological tools in online learning
environments can be useful if learners
possess self-efficacy for regulating their
own learning, which leads to positive self-
efficacy for using online learning
Outcome expectancies and goal setting
•People with high outcome expectancy of
certain action result to specific outcomes,
which leads to high level of motivation to
perform successfully
•Outcome expectations can predict
performance motivation
•People who set themselves specific
difficult goals perform better than people
who have no goals at all or vague goals
like “do your best”.
Literature Review
Abstract
Emtinan Alqurashi, Instructional Technology and Leadership
Duquesne University
Methodology
•Participants: graduate students in the
school of education taking fully online
courses
•Setting: face-to-face & online
•Procedure: mixed method, online
survey and in-depth interviews.
•Phenomenology: investigates the way
people experience the world
•Structure online survey for quantitative
data and structures interviews a deeper
understanding of students’ perception
and experiences
Qualitative data analysis:
•Familiarizing yourself with your data
•Generating initial codes
•Searching for themes
•Reviewing themes
•Defining and naming themes
•Producing the report
Implementation
• No generalizations can be made if
there were a limited number of
participants
References
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Students satisfaction
• One of the pillars to assess the quality of online
learning
• Self-efficacy is considered as a major factor to
predict student’s satisfaction in online learning
environments
• if learner’s expectations in specific
domains decrease, their level of learning
satisfaction decrease as well
• self-efficacy was a significant predictor of
student’s satisfaction and their willingness
to take other online courses in the future.
Proposed Research Questions
How do students perceive their self-efficacy
in online learning environments in relation
to their satisfaction?
How do students’ outcome expectation of
the online course relate to their
satisfaction?
How do students’ goals in online learning
relate to their satisfaction?