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Examining Student Satisfaction and Gender Differences in Technology-Supported, Blended Learning

1. INTRODUCTION Creation and adoption of new instructional approaches that can better assist college students' learning needs and help increase their engagement has been a major focus in higher education over the years. With the increased popularity and advancements in information technology (IT), technology-supported learning has gained much attention in contemporary higher education. Over the years, higher education has gone through three generations of evolution (So and Brush, 2008). The first generation is the traditional, face-to-face instruction in which students and their instructors meet physically in a designated classroom (So and Brush, 2008). During the class time, instructors disseminate knowledge to students through lecturing or other instructional approaches. The second generation is e-learning (also called distance learning) which is made possible because of the increased maturity and accessibility of computer and network technologies (Kulkarni et al., 2013; So and Brush, 2008; Sun et al., 2008). Researchers have found that learners perceive e-learning as effective since it can provide self-paced and multimedia instruction (Liaw, Huang, and Chen, 2007). However, concerns about e-learning also have been identified in previous research, such as the time and labor cost to set up, maintain, and use the e-learning environment (Sun et al., 2008). In addition, such environment may give students a feeling of separation from both their instructors and classmates, and students without high motivation may have difficulties in catching up with the class (eLearner Iowa State University, 2014). Thus, it is not surprising that some students still prefer face-to-face instruction. Recently, the third generation--the blended learning (also called hybrid learning in some literature)--has come into higher education, aiming to combine the advantages of both the face-to-face instruction and e-learning in order to provide a better learning environment to students (Ahmed, 2010; Asarta and Schmidt, 2013; Padilla-Melendez, Aguila-Obra, and Garrido-Moreno, 2013; So and Brush, 2008). Blended learning is defined as the "combination of learning delivery methods, including most often face-to-face instruction with asynchronous and/or synchronous computer technologies" (So and Brush, 2008, p. 321), and it enables students to conduct "both online and offline interaction" (So and Brush, 2008, p. 322). In other words, blended learning utilizes a variety of teaching methods from both face-to-face instruction and e-learning. In blended learning, students have opportunities to meet their instructors and classmates face to-face in the physical classroom, and also can perform certain class activities online by themselves. In terms of time frame, e-learning is generally believed to originate during the 1980's (Moore, Dickson-Deane, and Galyen, 2011), while blended learning started around 2000 (Ahmed, 2010). Although the idea of blended learning has existed for over a decade, surprisingly, relatively fewer academic studies have been done on it (Tselios, Daskalakis, and Papadopoulou, 2011). The related existing research mainly has focused on describing and evaluating certain class structures (Asarta and Schmidt, 2013; So and Brush, 2008). Much less has systematically and empirically investigated factors that could influence the success of the blended learning environment (Ahmed, 2010). To address such gap, this study developed a research model to systematically examine the impacts of students' computer-self efficacy, instructor characteristics, and facilitating conditions on students' perceived accomplishment, perceived enjoyment, and satisfaction toward blended learning. We include the three independent variables--students' computer-self efficacy, instructor characteristics, and facilitating conditions --because they focus on different perspectives, all of which could play important roles in influencing the success of blended learning. …