Relationship Between Students’ Charesteristics And Their Opinion Towards E-Learing Systems: A Case Study of Communication Sciences Undergraduate Program

E-courses in about two years, during Coruna epidemic, replaced traditional face-to-face classes. So, higher education teachers had to replace in-person classes with virtual environments. The replacement caused a number of problems in the teaching-learing process and consequently affected learning quality and performance. Based on the above, a set of research questions may be formulated as follows: “what is the opinion of students towards e-learning systems and e-courses?”, and “Is there a relationship between students’ characteristics and their opinion towards e-learning systems and e-courses?” To answer these questions, a research project was designed and conducted in a communication sciences program. The target population included 43 undergraduate students in a research university in Tehran. This was considered the statistical sample under observation. The research method was analytical survey trought which the necessary data were collected and analysed. The results indicate that the majority of students (72%) did not have positive opinion towards e-learning systems and were not satisfied. Furthermore, there is no relationship between students’ characterstics (gendre and interest in their field of study) and their opinion. A Chi-square ( ) test confirmed there is no relationship. The last part of the article provides a set of exective and research proposals for continuing this study with further studies to uncover more insights.
Purpose
Higher education in the 21st century has faced various challenges. Among these is the use of information and communication technology in the teaching-learning process. In this regard, the application of this technology is aimed at individualizing education, and open learning approaches, online and remotely. The expansion of the use of the aforementioned technologies can be seen in the use of electronic learning systems in higher education systems due to the epidemic of the Covid-19 virus. With the outbreak of the corona virus in the winter of 2019, all universities, not only in Iran but in other parts of the world, instead of using face-to-face classes, turned to online classes and electronic learning systems. This created several challenges for higher education systems. Among these, the insufficient preparation of students and lecturers for the use of electronic learning approaches.  Based on the above points, the aim of this research was to find out whether “there is a relationship between students' characteristics and their satisfaction with electronic learning systems?" To achieve this goal, the two research questions were considered,   and a hypothesis was tested.

a) Research questions:

 1- What are the individual characteristics of the students (age, gender, interest in the field of study)?
2- What is the students' opinion about the electronic systems and the extent to which they were satisfied with them?

b) Research hypothesis:

There is a relationship between students' opinions about the electronic systems and their characteristics.
Design / Method
To answer this question, a descriptive-analytical research project was designed and conducted. The population under study was students of an undergraduate program in communication sciences. The number of these students was 43. This number was also considered as the sample for collecting data. The main variables investigated included the opinion of the students regarding e-learning systems, as well as the individual characteristics of the students. In this study, the electronic system was defined as a system which uses information and communication technologies in order to replace in-person classroom (face-to-face) with a virtual classroom. The process of teaching-learning in such a system is managed through the Learning Management System (LMS) to provide course materials and interact with them. To collect data about the characteristics of the students and their opinion, a questionnaire was used which included two parts: part one, was a survey questionnaire including questions regarding: age, gender, place of birth, field of study in high school and also their interest in the current field of study (at the university). Part two of the questionnaire was a scale composed of 28 pairs of adjectives. In other words, the second part of the questionnaire was AttrakDiff semantic differential scale through which students were asked to indicate their experience regarding the e-learning systems on a 7-point. The AttrakDiff semantic differential is a scale which is a validated and is considered as one of the most frequently used user experience questionnaires.
Findings
The results show that in the sample under study (communication sciences program) nearly 70% of students were women. With regard to place of birth, 52% of the sample students were those whose place of birth was Tehran and 48% were from other provinces. After Tehran, the largest number of students was from Khorasan province. Furthermore, results indicated that for 26% of sample students, the field of communication science was their first choice to enter higher education, and for 30% of students, the field of communication science was the second to fifth choice, in addition to that, for another 15% of students the field of communication science was their sixth to tenth choice in the entrance exam to higher education. With regard to students’ opinion about e-learning systems and their satisfaction, only 28 percent of students were satisfied or relatively satisfied. In other words, 72 percent were dissatisfied or relatively dissatisfied. Furthermore, no relationship between students' satisfaction with the electronic systems and their characteristics is confirmed. In addition, test of hypothesis with regard to relationship between students' satisfaction with the electronic systems and their interest in the field of communication sciences indicated no relationship. For both hypothesis p<0.01.
Conclusion
As was indicated above, the purpose of this research was to determine the relationship between the students' characteristics and their opinions about the e- learning systems. The population under study was one of the undergraduate courses of communication sciences in one of the research universities of Iran. There were 43 students in the population under study which were considered as the sample. In this sample, women tended to study communication sciences more than men. The proportion of female students in this field was twice of male students. Furthermore, those students born in Tehran showed a tendency towards the field of communication sciences more than those students who are born in other parts of Iran. Also, in the population under study, the field of study of the majority of students in high school was humanities rather than physical sciences. Finally, about only one-fourth of students in the sample population were satisfied with the e-learning systems. At the end, the article argues about the possible reasons for such results and discussion is made regarding how to encourage candidates to choose the field of communication sciences as their first choice in entrance exams to higher education.