Scope

Background:

Both online and traditional academic institutions have gradually structured and reworked their policies on the basis of perceptions, satisfaction, needs, and requirements of their primary clients, namely the students. Some variables, related to the academic experience of the students, considering the perceptions of the learning environment, have a great influence on the academic performance, motivation, and learning strategies.

Students’ perceptions of their learning environment, in light of their motivations and expectations, determine how situational factors influence the approach to learning and academic learning outcomes; literature-based on learning analytics in higher education is trying to contribute to predicting student performance to develop a better awareness of the factors that determine an effective online learning environment and to gain useful insights for teachers to allow them to improve their course materials, methods and resources. Despite its widespread diffusion, student perceptions related to the learning environment of academic online courses must certainly be explored further and verified, in order to develop academic and institutional strategies aimed at encouraging the best learning outcomes.

Aims and scopes:

Considering the above-mentioned background and the salience of the topic, the present special track aim is to focus on the relations between students’ perception of the academic environment (teaching, workload, and assessment), their learning approaches, and outcomes in online academic learning environments. More specifically, since, in higher education, distance learning environments are different from traditional ones, the special track will concentrate on research and trends on student’s perceptions regarding course design and organization, content presentation, learning climate, digital interaction (with peers, tutors, and teachers), feedback, technical competency and workload, teaching methods, and their possible impact on satisfaction, motivation and learning outcomes.

Potential scopes of interest:

The special track aims also at providing a forum for the possible further investigation of different aspects that have effect on student’s perceptions of the learning processes in online learning academic education and on student’s performance: online teaching methods, online homework methods, online assessment methods, workload, study timing, and any recent pedagogical innovations in higher education.

Authors are invited to contribute with research papers, case studies, quantitative study, qualitative study, methodological or theoretical contribution, educational technologies products, and reviews, on the following topics regarding higher education: student’s perceptions of online teaching methods, technologies, assessment, conception of learning, workload, digital interaction, digital feedback, digital active learning environments, course variety, course security, mobile technology, online best practices, comparative analysis of student’s performance and perceptions between online vs traditional academic learning environment, digital identities, online educational resources, learning climate.