Students Perception of the Effectiveness of Online Courses

Local Problem

Over the past years, e-learning has grown tremendously. This is because most learning
institutions have embraced the different trends of technology into training and education(Shaw &
Williams, 2019). In most learning institutions, learning now takes place electronically, and in
some, students take their courses online. The implementation of online courses as an alternative
to physical classes comes about with advantages and disadvantages. This is because online
courses have achieved some things that were not possible in physical classes.
On the other hand, some costs have been undergone as a result of the implementation of
the online classes. Research studies that have been conducted in the past in this field fail to
address the perceptions of students regarding the effectiveness of online classes. This is because
most researchers and scholars mainly focus on research on the effectiveness, benefits, and
disadvantages of online classes.
Also, much research has been conducted on how institutions have gone extra miles to
implement and create reliable and effective online courses, among other technology trends that
have been implemented (Shaw & Williams, 2019). In this study, the main target will be
analyzing and figuring out the perceptions that students have on online courses. One of the major
problems in doing so is that very little research and references have been made to ascertain the
specific perceptions of students regarding the effectiveness of online classes. This means that the
literature behind this discussion is somehow limited which calls for extra digging into real
research and natural study. What this means is that there is a need to do extensive research on the
exact thoughts and perceptions that students have in terms of what they perceive and expect
online classes to be in order to be termed as adequate. This is important as it will help instructors

and institutions can create productive online learning environments and those that align with
perceptions of students.

Background of the Problem

Back in the days, education was all about going to school and piling up many books for
their studies, in which their daily basis was waking up early in the morning, packing these lots of
books and then heading to the nearest bus stop and later gets dropped in buildings (Rueter et al.,
2019). In the structures where teachers had chalks and other writing materials ready for their
lessons to start. Nowadays all that is all gone, especially at the start of the 21st century since
these buildings, for example, are no longer even suitable to hold lessons. According to research,
this has been caused by the emerging technology in the sector of education.
As the world changes, the education system should also adopt new trends that will
change it to pace up with the changing world. Each year reports from different media
organizational experts on emerging patterns of technology are released, especially those that aim
at developing the education system shortly. The reports highlight a couple of significant changes
in the education system that the people at the educational level concerned should take note of
(Jiang et al., 2019). Most of these statements show that most of the technological trends now
emerging have a very significant impact on education. Many people have been accredited with
developments in modern classroom technologies.
The classroom and training centers have changed from the start of the 21st century
regarding technology applicable and are still evolving. Currently, the lecturers have evolved
from writing on wallboard and now use projectors, and there are smart screens in classes for

learning purposes. In the future, however, the technology used in classrooms will be very
different from the one being used right now (Cochran et al., 2016). In the next three to five years
to come, students will have portable devices that they will be using in their classrooms instead of
writing down what the teacher is saying. They will have their notes digitally secured by saving
all the learning information in the cloud.
As a result, students will participate in classrooms through back-channel media, which is
a component of classroom technology, where they can interact with one another and the teacher.
They will be able to post questions, answers, comments, etc. on the devices and they will be
displayed on the screens in their classrooms so that everyone can see and reply through their
digital devices (Shaw & Williams, 2019). In addition to this, new programs will be developed
where students will be