The influence of staff use of a virtual learning environment on student satisfaction

The use of virtual learning environments in higher education has shown significant growth over the last few years. This presents challenges in a variety of ways, challenges to provide effective educational materials within virtual learning environments (VLE), challenges in teaching style and the development of appropriate pedagogy. In this paper we discuss the work done introducing a VLE at Buskerud University College (HiBu) in Norway, and the impact that there can be shown through the use of satisfaction surveys, A longitudinal survey which have been carried out on general level of student satisfaction over a nine year period, a specific survey on satisfaction with the use of a VLE and a survey on staff attitude to e-learning. Our interest is in considering how the introduction of the VLE itself has impacted on satisfaction of students, whether it has changes the nature of the environment and whether it has resulted in changes in expectations. And from the survey we will attempt to describe what effects it has had HiBu has been engaged in a number of activities aimed at increasing staff and student use of its VLE. These efforts have been focused on training staff in different discipline areas and some training of students, and the optimisation of the development of learning material to support academic activity. Additionally there has been further product training in the various facilities available through the VLE to support other aspects of academic factors. This training has not been limited to the lecturing staff but includes all categories of employees. Additionally HiBu has established a major task in focusing on the pedagogical model to support the use of the VLE. This task has been the responsibility of a group of predominantly academic staff, but with representation from technical and library staff. The responsibility of this group has been to identify this pedagogical model as the basis for e-learning within HiBu. HiBu has been collecting data on student satisfaction for a number of years, both pre and post use of the VLE. The model adopted for the student satisfaction surveys is reasonably consistent, with the exception of some questions that have been introduced to cover the use of the VLE. As a result of this HiBu has been able to determine the effect on student satisfaction of the use of the VLE. There has been no significant change in the satisfaction levels in the last few years. However there is a notable change in the student requests for change of activities.