Business Report Writing Students' Perceptions of Their Ability to Succeed in an Online Environment vs. Students' Performance in an Online Course

Literature Review

As e-students request courses and programs in an anywhere, anytime environment, synchronous and asynchronous formats must be utilized to develop online learning. The definition of online learning is based on definitions of distance education. In 1972, the International Council for Correspondence Education coined the term distance education (Moore, 1990). Numerous definitions of distance education or distance learning have continued to evolve over the years.

Definitions in the area of distance education must be reviewed to establish a comprehensive definition of online learning. Distance education has been defined as “the process of extending learning or delivering instructional resource sharing opportunities, to locations away from a classroom, building or site by using video, audio, computer, multimedia communications, or some combination of these with their traditional delivery meetings” (Instructional Telecommunications Council, 2001). Traditional classroom education has been defined as providing “assistance to learners that enable them to achieve levels of development (and efficiency) that they would not be able to achieve by themselves” (Tiffin & Rajasingham, 1995, p. 240). Dewey (1963) incorporated another component of the definition of education by noting key to any type of effective educational experience is continuity and interaction. Whether pure or blended, online education is defined for the purpose of this study as “the use of technology (software and hardware) to provide assistance to learners to enable them to achieve the set level of learning through continuity and interaction” (Crews, Wilkinson, Wiedmaier, Hemby, and McCannon, 2006).

With these definitions in mind, Allen and Seaman (2006) delve into defining online learning as ‘those in which at least 80 percent of the course content is delivered online” (p. 4). Allen and Seaman further delineate the type of course as follows: 1) Traditional: Zero percent of content delivered online, 2) Web Facilitated: 1-29 percent of content delivered learning online, 3) Blended: 30-79 percent of course content delivered online, and 4) Online: 80 percent or more of content delivered online with typically no face-to-face (F2F) class meetings.