The Impact of Online Learning Strategies on Students' Academic Performance

*Khaled Hamdan and Abid Amorri*

### **Abstract**

Higher education institutions have shifted from traditional face to face to online teaching due to Corona virus pandemic which has forced both teachers and students to be put in a compulsory lockdown. However the online teaching/learning constitutes a serious challenge that both university teachers and students have to face, as it necessarily requires the adoption of different new teaching/learning strategies to attain effective academic outcomes, imposing a virtual learning world which involves from the students' part an online access to lectures and information, and on the teacher's side the adoption of a new teaching approach to deliver the curriculum content, new means of evaluation of students' personal skills and learning experience. This chapter explores and assesses the online teaching and learning impact on students' academic achievement, encompassing the passing in review the adoption of students' research strategies, the focus of the students' main source of information viz. library online consultation and the collaboration with their peers. To reach this end, descriptive and parametric analyses are conducted in order to identify the impact of these new factors on students' academic performance. The findings of the study shows that to what extent the students' online learning has or has not led to any remarkable improvements in the students' academic achievements and, whether or not, to any substantial changes in their e-learning competence. This study was carried out on a sample of University College (UAEU) students selected in Spring 2019 and Fall 2020.

**Keywords:** online learning environment, content-based research, process-based research, success factors assessment

### **1. Introduction**

With the advent of COVID-19 pandemic and the shutdown of universities worldwide for fear of contamination due to the spread of the coronavirus, higher educational institutions have deemed necessary to adopt new teaching strategies, exclusively online, to deliver their curriculum content and keep from the Corona virus widespread at bay [1]. Technology was called upon to play this pivotal teaching/learning online role, as it has influenced people's task accomplishment in various ways. It has become a part of our ever changing lives. It is an important part of e-learning to create relationship-involving technology, course content and pedagogy in learning/teaching environment. Therefore, e-learning is becoming

unavoidable in a virtual teaching environment where students can take control of their learning and optimize it in a virtual classroom and elsewhere. So, learning today has shifted from the conventional face to face learning to online learning and to a direct access to information through technologies available as e-learning has proven to be more beneficial to students in terms of knowledge or information acquisition. Online teaching promotes learning by encouraging the students' use of various learning strategies at hand and increases the level of their commitment to studying their majors. Virtual world represents an effective learning environment, providing users with an experience-based information acquisition. Instructors set up the course outcomes by creating tasks involving problem or challenge-based learning situations and offering the learner a full control of exploratory learning experiences. However, there are some challenges for instructors such as the selection of the most appropriate educational strategies and how best to design learning tasks and activities to meet learners' needs and expectations. Various approaches can lead towards strong students' behavioral changes especially when combined with ethical principles. However, with careful selection of the learning environment, pedagogical strategies lining up with the concrete specifics of the educational context, the building of learners' self-confidence and their empowerment during the learning process becomes within reach. Another benefit of using online teaching/learning is that here is a need to explore new teaching strategies and principles that positively influence distance education, as traditional teaching/learning methods are becoming less effective at engaging students in the learning process. Finally, e-learning can solve many of the students' learning issues in a conventional learning environment, as it helps them to attend classes for various reasons, as it has made the communication/interaction between them and their instructors much easier and the access to lectures much more at hand. Students can attend online university courses and at the same time meet other social obligations. Therefore, the circumstances in a learner's life, and whatever problems or distraction he/she may have such as family problems or illnesses, may no longer be an impediment to his education. Learners can practice in virtual situations and face challenges in a safe environment, which leads to a more engaged learning experience that facilitates better knowledge acquisition.

The work presents the educational processes as a modern strategy for teaching/ learning. e-learning tends to persuade the users to be virtually available to act naturally. There are a few factors affecting the outcomes such as learning aims and objectives, and different pedagogical choices. Instructors use various factors to measure the learning quality like Competence, Attitude, Content Delivery, Reliability, and Globalization [2–4]. In this work, we are going to pass in review positive and negative impacts of online learning followed by recommendations to increase awareness regarding online learning and the use of this new strategic technology. Modern teaching methods like brainstorming, problem solving, indirect-consultancy, and inquiry-based method have a significant effect in the educational progress [5].

The aim of this research is to examine the effect of using modern teaching methods, such as teacher-student interactive and student-centered methods, on students' academic performance. Factors that may affect students' performance and success- the technology used, students' collaboration/teamwork, time management and communication skills are taken into consideration [6]. It also attempts to identify and to show to what extent online learning environment, when well integrated and adapted in course planning and objectives, can cater for students' needs and wants. Does online teaching make a significant improvement in students' academic performance and their personal skills such as organizations, communications, responsibilities, problem-solving tasks, engagement, learning interest, selfevolution, and abilities to reach their potential? Is students' struggle is not purely academic, but rather related to the lack of personal skills?

### **2. Online learning experience**

There are many motives behind the implementation of the online learning experience. The online learning is mandatory nowadays to all audience due to COVID −19 pandemic, which forced the higher educational authorities to start the online teaching [1]. We believe that we reached a tipping point where making changes to the current learning process is inevitable for many reasons. Today learners have instant access to information through technology and the web, can manage their own acquisition of knowledge through online learning. As a result, traditional teaching and learning methods are becoming less effective at engaging students, who no longer rely exclusively on the teacher as the only source of knowledge. Indeed, 90% of the respondents use internet as their major source of information. So the teacher is new role is to be a learning facilitator, a guide for his students. He should not only help his students locate information, but more importantly question it and reflect upon it and formulate an opinion about it. Another reason for the adoption of the online learning is that higher institution did not hesitate one moment to integrate it as a primary tool of education. So, it transformed the conventional course and current learning process into e-learning concept. The integration of the online teaching into the curriculum resulted in several issues to instructors, curriculum designer and administrators, starting from the infrastructure to online teaching and assessment. Does the current IT infrastructure support this integration? What course content should the instructor teach and how it should be delivered? What effective pedagogy needs to be adopted? How learning should be assessed? What is the direct effect of the online learning on students' performance? [7].

With reference to the survey findings, the majority of students were among the staunch supporters of online learning taking into consideration the imposed COVID-19 lockdown circumstances, as they expressed their full support and confidence in computer skills to share digital content, using online learning and collaboration platforms with their peers, and expressed their satisfaction with the support of the online teaching and learning [8].

However, a small percentage of the survey respondents, expressed their below average satisfaction when higher educational institutions have invested in digital literacy and infrastructure, as they believe they should provide more flexible delivery methods, digital platforms and modernized user-friendly curricula to both students and teachers [9]. On the same lines, the higher education authorities regard the quick and unexpected development of the UAE's higher education landscape, ICT infrastructure, and advanced online learning/teaching methods, imposed by COVID-19, have had a tremendous adverse impact on the students' culture, thus leading to students' social seclusion from their peers, imposing new social norms and behavior regarding plagiarism, affecting students' cultural ethics and learning and collaboration with their peers, when adopting the digital culture [10].

A current study emphasized the need for adoption of technology in education as a way to lessen the effects of Coronavirus pandemic lockdown in education to palliate the loss of face- to- face teaching/learning which has more beneficial aspects of learning for students than online learning as it offers more interactive learning opportunities.

We recommend that all these questions should be taken into consideration when designing a new course i.e. the e-learning strategies, the learners' and instructor's new roles, course content and pedagogy and students' performance/achievement assessment (**Figure 1**). In this experience, we focus only on the implementation of new learning academic objectives- how they are infused into the curriculum and how they are assessed. The ultimate objective of implementing a new learning process is to design a curriculum conveyed by a creative pedagogy and oriented towards the cultivation of a creative person yearning for the exploration of new ideas [11].

**Figure 1.** *E-learning approach.*

The afore-mentioned objectives lead to design a comprehensive learning experience with new learning outcomes where instructors infuse new practical skills - Critical thinking and Problem-Solving Tasks, Creativity and Innovation, Communication and Collaboration. Other skills are implicitly infused into the curriculum such as, self-independent learning, interdependence, lifelong learning, flexibility, adaptability, and assuming academic learning responsibilities. Online learning is defined as virtual learning using mobile and wireless computing technologies in a way to promote learners' learning abilities [12]. In (**Figure 2**), each component of the e-learning process is defined clearly below [13].

### **2.1 Active instructor**

His role is to facilitate learning process in the virtual classroom, to engage students in the learning process, to allow them to participate in designing their own course content and to contribute to design learning assessment parameters.

### **2.2 Active learner**

He can access course content anytime and from anywhere, engage with his peers in a collaborative environment, formulate his opinions continuously, interact with other learning communities, communicate effectively, share and publish their findings with others in online environment.

### **2.3 Creative pedagogy**

Both instructors and learners decide on what to learn online and how it should be learned. This experience is designed to promote an inquiry and challenge-based learning models where teachers and students work together to learn about compelling issues, propose solutions to real problems and take actions [11]. The approach involves students to reflect on their learning, on the impact of their actions and to publish their solutions to a worldwide audience [14].

*The Impact of Online Learning Strategies on Students' Academic Performance DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.94425*

#### **2.4 Flexible curriculum**

A core curriculum is designed, but the facilitator has the freedom to innovate and customize course content accordingly up to the aspiration of the learners; this means that the learner's knowledge of the material will mainly come from his own online research (formal and informal content), and from his own creativity and collaboration with his peers (teamwork).

#### **2.5 Communities outreach**

This allows a group of students to formulate real-world context research question, connect with local learning and global communities to find creative solutions to their problems, create opportunities to connect themselves with international communities. These opportunities will foster students' social and leadership skills [15].

According to students' observation, more than 70% of instructors found that the online learning using Blackboard ultra-collaboration boosts students' learning interest, engagement and motivation. 84% of teachers use required to use interactive tools in order to engage students in presenting and sharing a five minutes presentation to their classmates, write a reflective essay on their experience, be involved in a collaborative project (interest- based learning project). 97% of students contributed to self and peer assessments, and 97% interacted using online management systems. Students were also encouraged to interact with their peers using blackboard group collaborate. Thanks to the online teaching strategy, 70% of students were able to deliver on time their work.

For the study purpose, several assessments components incorporate both individual and group work. For the individual work, each student was required to make an individual presentation on any subject of his own interest, write a reflective essay, self -assessment, class peer assessment, midterm and final exams. For the collaborative work, students were assigned teams and each student should

#### **Figure 3.**

*Conceptual model of students' E-learning environment parameters.*

contribute to the project delivered every two weeks in the form of a final presentation and a final project. Rubrics were designed and all students were well instructed to use them. Teachers were trained to monitor and facilitate the experience and the internal learning management systems such as Blackboard.

The subsequent (**Figure 3**) shows the feedback loop of content mapping of factors and their relationships in relation to students' performance and intake. The first feedback loop begins at the node called "Students". The second one begins at the node entitled "Teacher". There are two major positive feedback loops. For instance, a good team improves co-operation and creativity which increase the team's learning experience. Setting clear goals and interactive strategies will enhance online learning and performance results. The E-learning process and the project outcomes are influenced by technology use [13].

### **3. Research methodology**

We studied the impact of online learning using technology in virtual classrooms and the effect of performance factors on students' learning behavior and achievement. The study focused on a sample of 6045 students, collected from the enrolment of University College students in spring 2020, at United Arab Emirates University has used online teaching strategy in comparison to fall 2019 teaching/ learning experience, which used conventional teaching strategy involving 7369 students (See **Table 1**). The study shows the learning outcomes are similar for both virtual and conventional learning, although the assessment methods are different. They include students' learning outcomes assessment, testing (assessing


**Table 1.** *Students' population.*

### *The Impact of Online Learning Strategies on Students' Academic Performance DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.94425*

prior and post knowledge acquisition) and quantitative versus conventional research. The findings of the survey are discussed below. Descriptive statistics were obtained to summarize the sample characteristics and performance variables. Pearson Correlation was used to evaluate the association between the learning outcomes dimensions. Independent Samples t-test was used to compare the mean overall performance of the online learning. Linear Regression was used to determine the impact of the learning characteristics (Critical thinking, Creativity, Communication and Collaboration) on the overall performance score. Factor Analysis was used to study the inter-relationships among the learning characteristics and compare the online methods.

The objectives of the learning process consist of providing a diversified learning environment. The positive impact of this diversity is reflected in the students' performance. Students in various represented colleges have similar passing grades as high (80–98%) for both Online Approach (OLA) and Conventional learning -Face-to-Face (FoF). The University College is the largest college in the University with more than 4000 students. Most of UAEU students start their study in UC; they take English, Arabic, IT and Math (**Figure 4**).

This study was limited to GEIL101 foundation students. Surveys were sent out to all information literacy sections at the end of the first semester 2019/2020, but there were only 87 respondents. The survey had 2 parts, one part is about students' achievement/performance, and the second part use is about online learning in a virtual classroom. All sessions were conducted online by trained instructors in tandem with the University library delivered by professional librarians. In this report, fall 2019 students' data are used as the sample for the study (**Table 2**).

Overall, the results indicate the online learning was beneficial for students as it shown in their academic achievements and in tables below. A significant number of students reported high comfort levels of attending online courses in virtual classroom instead of conventional learning. Results indicated students have a positive

#### **Figure 4.**

*University college percentage passing rate.*


**Table 2.** *GEIL students.* reception to online approach rather than traditional classrooms. Additionally, qualitative data identified a clearconsiderations for the integration of new technology into the new teaching and learning experience.

### **4. E-learning results and analyses**

**Table 3** shows the IL students' pre and post tests performance. The analysis on the pre and post-tests, using the means comparison and one sample test, shows an increase of students' performance by 84%, the mean of the pre-test is around 7.5 and the post test is 13.85, a significant difference of 6.35. 65% of students score above 60% (passing rate for the course) in the post-test, only 2.4% of students scored above 60% in the pre-test. This means that 97.6% of students did not have basic information literacy knowledge, but after going through intensive 12 week learning under e-learning conditions, 65% achieved the course outcomes with higher scores.

The following tables (**Tables 3** and **4**) shows the students' performance by each learning activity:

The scores in the post-test ranged between 11 and 20, whereas it ranged between 6 to 9 in the pre-test (**Figure 5**).

The above results show that OLA students scored higher than the FoF in the majority of the learning activities. There is an important performance of online students in the midterm and final exams though both approaches where offered the similar assessments criteria under the same test conditions. In the next section, the online learning process validity, the learning activities, and the learning outcome achievements, will be discussed in greater details. Several statistical models, qualitative and quantitative analysis have been applied for this purpose.


#### **Table 3.**

*Students' academic performance.*

### **5. Impact analysis of the learning activities**

It is important for an educator to evaluate which type of learning activity that has an important impact on students' performance. It will help the curriculum designers to adjust and improve the syllabus content accordingly. Two types of analyses are conducted quantitatively and qualitatively; the first analysis relies on the learning activities grades and course final scores. The second one relies on students' feedback through reflective essays and teachers' perception towards their students' learning progress.

#### *The Impact of Online Learning Strategies on Students' Academic Performance DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.94425*


**Table 4.**

*Students' learning activity.*

**Figure 5.** *Pre and post-tests comparison distribution.*

#### **5.1 Quantitative analysis**

#### *5.1.1 Impact of the learning activities on students' performance*

To analyze the significance of each learning activity on students' performance, a regression linear model was used to analyze the impact of each learning skill on students' performance. According to the output report, the model is significant at 95% (p < 0.000), and there is a strong correlation between 95.8% of the learning skills and students' performance (r2 = 0.919).

Overall, all learning skills strategies have a significant impact on students' performance. Each student's learning skills and their impact will be analyzed. The following graph shows that individual contribution has less impact on the student's performance, but the course component is very important where students demonstrate their interaction with the course content. The quality of the students' online participation, their assiduity and interaction with others and their contribution in the projects are different from class participation. Therefore, statistically speaking, it has a lower impact. So, it is highly recommended to review how this component is graded.

#### *5.1.2 Impact of each learning skill on students' achievement*

The following table describes the impact of each individual learning skill on students' performance. To do this analysis, we used Pearson Correlation Coefficient to measure the strength of the linear relationship between the learning skills. The following figure shows the relationship between the learning skills.

From the table below, the test 1 (Midterm Exam) and test 2 (Final Exam) have the strongest impact (754 and 758) respectively on the final grades, even though students scored lower in these activities compared to other assessed learning activities. They are still the most efficient assessment methods to evaluate students' achievement. The projects, individual presentation and reflective essays have also a significant impact on students' performance. The only learning activity with the lowest impact is the individual participation and engagement in the class, which is an important learning activity, and it needs a review on how to assess it in an effective way.

### **6. Teachers' observations**

Students' e-learning performance data is processed and presented. The six characteristic attributes are identified. Each characteristic is divided into further

### *The Impact of Online Learning Strategies on Students' Academic Performance DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.94425*

sub-items that are rated from 1 to 5 by the respondents. Then, for each of the six main characteristics, the average of the sub-items rating is calculated. The box plot (see **Figure 6**) shows a detailed distribution of each response. This is made up of the results, comparing the responses given to the different factors affecting learning. The result shows that the teachers rating of the effect of online learning in the following table. Example: 50% of teachers think that 70% of students improved their creativity skills.

Descriptive statistics for the learning variables are shown below in **Table 5**. In general, the mean and median of all the characteristics are quite high-around 3.5 (**Table 6**). Regarding correlations between learning parameters, the results show that almost all characteristics are highly inter-correlated (p < 0.001) (See **Table 7**).

#### **Figure 6.**

*Using e-learning in the virtual classroom.*


#### **Table 5.**

*Regression model on learning skill of students' performance.*




**Table**

**6.**

 *Correlation between the learning skills on students' academic performance.*



 *E-learning characteristics.*

## **7. Students' results and analysis**

The survey was to collect feedback from students after they started using online learning courses. The effects of this methods on students' learning and understanding A scale of 1–5 range from strongly agree (5) to strongly disagree (1). Different dimensions of online approach are analyzed and Eighty-seven UAE College Students coming from different Universities were asked to give their perception on different aspects of online learning methods.

For the question (1), "Do you like online learning technology?" 84 respondents representing 97.6% of the students said they do. As for the question (2), "Do you feel ready to use online environment?", 61 students representing 71.2% said they do.

While 7 students or 8% said, they do not. Only 19 student or 21.8% were neutral (see **Table 8**).

As for question (3), "whether students have all the required technology tools for online learning", 71 of the respondents representing 83.53% agreed but only 4 students disagreed (See **Table 9**).

Regarding the question (4), as to "whether students have reliable internet connection for online learning, 56 of the respondents representing 64% said that they agreed, while 7 students said that they disagree (See **Table 10**).

For question (5), "Did Online learning help your study when you have flexible schedule?" 53 students representing 63% of the respondents said it helped them because of time restriction. On the other hand, 31 students representing 37% said that time was not visible (See **Table 11**).

For question (6), "Did online learning help you to be more productive?" 38 students representing 45% of the respondents said that online class helped them to be more organized and productive. On the other hand, 19 students representing 23% said that it was not productive for them (See **Table 12**).

#### **Table 8.**

*Ready for online transformation.*


#### **Table 9.**

*Do students have the required tools for online learning?*


#### **Table 10.**

*Do students have the reliable internet connection for online learning?*

For question (7), "How do rate your experience with your team online" 58 students representing 60% of the respondents said that online learning class is like normal class. On the other hand, 9 students representing 10% said that they were not satisfied with online learning (See **Table 13**).

For question (7), "How do rate your internet connectivity and how often problems occurred?" 37 students representing 43% of the respondents said that online class runs into technical issues which lead to reduce their productivity and confidence. On the other hand, 42 students representing 48% said that there were no issues with their internet connections (See **Table 14**).

For question (8), "Did you develop any health issues since the start of online learning? 41 students representing 48% of the respondents said that online class causes health issues which lead to reduce their productivity and confidence. On the other hand, 25 students representing 29% said that there were no health issues using online learning (See **Table 15**).

For question (9), "Rate the distractions you have had online", 31 students representing 37% of the respondents said that online class did not face distractions. On the other hand, 23 students representing 27% said that there were not issues concerning online distraction (See **Table 16**).


#### **Table 11.**

*Did you have a flexible schedule when online learning was used?*


#### **Table 12.**

*Did online learning help you be more productive?*


#### **Table 13.**

*How do you rate your online experience with your team?*


#### **Table 14.**

*How often do you face technical problems?*

*The Impact of Online Learning Strategies on Students' Academic Performance DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.94425*


**Table 15.**

*Did you develop any health issues since the start of online learning?*


#### **Table 16.**

*Rate the distractions you have had at home.*

### **8. Conclusion**

The ultimate purpose of this investigation was to explore the impact of online learning on students' academic achievement as the demand has increased in recent times for online courses among institutions and college students who solely rely on flexible and comfortable education. We tried to measure in quantifiable terms the students' final academic performance after their exposure to online learning during this pandemic lockdown. The final results obtained in this study were quite self-eloquent, as they unequivocally show the tremendous impact of e- learning on students' academic performance and achievements, as it can benefit students in many ways, including enhancing and maximizing their learning independence and classroom participation. It is a good experience for students' transitional preparation to pursue college education and seek employment. Students were more engaged in the learning process than in conventional teaching, and online learning experience has revealed that didactic teaching style is no longer effective. They no longer regard teachers as the only source of information, but as learning facilitator and online learning from different internet sources as their main source of information. They have proved that they can assume their responsibilities, contribute to course design assessment and learning process personalization. Online learning also helped overcome time and space constraints imposed by the convention learning process and helped students to effectively communicate their findings and share their ideas with their peers locally and globally. The introduction of a new technology such as the online learning will undoubtedly have more impact on the learning outcomes only if we reconsider the delivery mode, content redesign, new assessment system. A suitable pedagogy and an appropriate content are the most important sources of students' learning motivation. Finally, e-learning has a bright future, tremendous learning potentialities and excellent organizational culture. Universities will incontrovertibly use many of the lessons learned during this pandemic lockdown period of this forced online teaching to adjust curriculum contents, teaching methods/lesson delivery, and assessment tools.

E-learning is here to stay and can make a much stronger contribution to higher education in the years to come. However, there are some negative effects of online class as it does not offer real a face to face contact and interaction with instructors and imposes time commitment and less accountability on students. There are also

### *E-Learning and Digital Education in the Twenty-First Century*

many online struggles that students face such as the impossibility to stay motivated all the time, as they sometimes feel that they are completely isolated. In addition, instructors feel impotent to control students' cheating, impose classroom discipline. In addition to that, poor students struggle to get the necessary electronic equipment to access this new mode of learning to interact in due time with their instructor, make necessary comments and raise questions to clear ambiguities and any equivocal statements and get appropriate feedback from their instructor.

There are other academic issues that need to be investigated deeply such as the perspectives of higher education quality focusing on the study of cultural, emotional, technological, ethical, health, financial or academic achievements. Furthermore, more academic research should be done about e-learning theories/distance learning to truly improvise a new and adequate teaching/learning approach.

## **Author details**

Khaled Hamdan\* and Abid Amorri UAEU-University College, UAE

\*Address all correspondence to: khamdan@uaeu.ac.ae

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

*The Impact of Online Learning Strategies on Students' Academic Performance DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.94425*

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### **Chapter 4**
