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As online learning continues to grow, it is important to investigate students' overall experiences in online learning environments. Understanding students' perspectives on their online classes or programs moves beyond the sole question of student satisfaction to more nuanced questions about how factors inside and outside of the classroom impact the online classroom. This qualitative research synthesis explored students' experiences with online learning. For example, some students were satisfied with their online courses but still struggled with balancing online courses and work responsibilities. Other students found that enrolling in an online program related to their jobs was very beneficial.
INTRODUCTION
The growth of online learning during the last decade has been remarkable. While in 1998 there were too few students enrolled online to count, according to a survey of more than 2500 intuitions, by 2009 more than 5.6 million students were taking an online course (Allen & Seaman, 2010). Nearly 30% of students were taking a course online. The same study also found percent of enrollment growth was 21%, while overall growth in higher education was only 2%. Moreover, the 21% growth rate for online enrollments far exceeds the less than 2% growth of the overall higher education student population. These numbers indicate that online learning has become an important mode of delivering instruction in higher education.
Although the numbers of students taking online courses are growing, research indicates that the students are in many ways the same students who take courses offline (Doyle, 2009). Students tend to be relatively similar when comparing race, gender, socioeconomic status, and physical distance from the institution. Students who take online courses tend to be slightly older than those students taking all courses offline (Doyle, 2009). Several important studies have documented that these students have good learning outcomes in online courses. Such research most frequently compares online to offline courses in experimental or quasi-experimental studies (Bernard et al., 2009; Gunawardena & Mclsaac, 2004; Lockee, Moore, & Burton, 2001). The studies clearly suggest that online and offline instructions often have similar or slightly more positive outcomes in the primary areas of cognitive gain (Means et al., 2009; Sitzmann, 2006).
While we know a good bit about the numbers, characteristics, and outcomes of students who take courses online, we know...