The impact of learning design interventions on student satisfaction in an online higher education environment

The engagement of higher education students in an online environment has been closely associated with student success; students that are engaged are more likely to learn, and as such, realize greater success or pass rates. Arguably student engagement is facilitated through the design and organization of the learning material, as well as the presence, attitude, and facilitation of learning undertaken by the online teacher. Effective learning design and teacher facilitation of the learning creates an optimized learning environment for online (and conceivably other) students. This article explores a pilot program in which aspects of the online learning material were redesigned in line with the university’s newly introduced Online Learning Model (OLM) within one of Australia’s premier higher education online learning universities, without addressing any other factors such as assessment or the teaching practices in any significant way. Data collected for this project was gathered from the university’s Learning Management System (LMS), the student feedback survey, and available retention data. This article details some of the feedback from students from the post-delivery survey aligned with the redesign of fourteen business faculty subjects. The findings from this study are that while the learning design interventions undertaken were positively received by students, student retention and student success or pass rates did not improve.