Exploring Learning Environment in Online Learning

Abstract

Learning environment possesses an important educational role in effective learning. The importance of the learning environment is to determine about the elements that could encourage students’ intense towards their studies and could impact on students’ academic achievement. Online learning is a type of delivery approach used in distance education that allows the synchronous and asynchronous exchange of resources over a communication network. Nowadays, teaching is more about assisting students in actively creating their own knowledge by giving those assignments that help this process instead of just delivering knowledge. Choosing the suitable teaching methods which congruent with specific learner needs and desired educational outcomes is critical to effective teaching. The most important factor in choosing teaching methods is to consider whether that method will help the students meeting the intended learning outcomes. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the four types of learning environments introduced by Bransford, Brown, and Cocking for online learning, including learner-centred, community-centred, assessment-centred and knowledge-centred for the purpose of facilitating effective learning among diploma level students. The study adopted a quantitative method survey utilizing Google Forms, involving 150 respondents purposely chosen from a major public university in Malaysia. The questionnaire instrument was adopted from a previous study conducted by Hassan, Majid & Hassan. There are four sections with related questions to measure the four types of learning environments under this study. Thus, the impact of this paper is that the researcher will achieve an effective learning by implementing the four types of learning environment. The result also revealed that students obtain an ideal learning environment at a public university in Malaysia.