A Research On Students’ Perception Of E-Learning Service Quality

With the socioeconomic development and the advent of information era, the continued job training and accelerated knowledge updating have become the important contents of our real life and the concept of life-long education has already taken root in people’s heart. However, it is unrealistic to get the modern people who are involved in the changing era and the economic tide to abandon everything they own to go back to school as full-time students. Thus E-learning has become the major concern of people. Although scholars have attached importance to the service quality of E-learning, mature theory of service quality management has been seldom introduced to the research on E-learning; meanwhile, students, the recipients and perceivers of E-learning, are often ignored in the research of the subjects when appraise the service quality of E-learning. This will not only in theory restrict the exploration of the key factors that influence the quality of E-learning, but also weaken the guiding effect of related theories. Based on the above, this dissertation introduces the model of quality management to the research on service quality of E-learning with students as guinea pigs, in hopes of providing some reference for the theories of, and the practice in, the enhancement of E-learning service quality and the competitiveness of E-learning colleges.This research involves three parts:first, based on the analysis and exploration of literaturess relevant to E-learning quality both at home and abroad and qualitative analyses methods such as interviewing experts and interviewing students, the vital factors that affect E-learning quality are determined. And then the vital factors that influence E-learning quality are obtained through the exploratory factor analysis and verifying factor analysis of 3621 samples collected. Secondly, the structural model of students’perception of E-learning service quality is established. The relations among the variables are explored, among which are students’perception of E-learning service quality and its expectation, service price, students’ perception of service value of E-learning, satisfaction degree of E-learning customers and the action tendency of students to enhance the competitiveness of e-learning colleges. At last, the personal nature of students is discussed and the influential analysis of students’ perception of e-learning in various regions conducted.Adopting the combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses, this thesis presents the four factor theory on E-learning service quality, which should be all the way through the processes of network technology, brand, resources and learning. The exploratory factor analysis and verifying factor analysis in this thesis both indicate that the evaluation model of E-learning service quality students perceive, which comprises four dimensions including 33 indicators, has relatively high validity and reliability, which is generally applicable to the analysis of key factor analysis of E-learning service quality. The thesis introduces the CS model to E-learning and adjust it, the characteristics of E-learning college being considered, thereby filling the gap that the CS model has not yet been considered in the analysis of E-learning quality problem. In addition, the differences of different regions in the E-learning service quality model are considered, making an improvement on the research of the factors that influence E-learning service quality. It is found in the thesis that the difference in locations of E-learning colleges makes varying differences in E-learning service quality perceived, price, value, extent of satisfaction, the action tendency of the E-learning colleges to improve their competitiveness.The thesis is applicable for reference for scientific development of E-learning and improvement of its service quality.