“Good Connections:” Exploring the Association between Online Student Engagement, Satisfaction, Technology Acceptance, Self-Efficacy and Final Grades

Session Description

Understanding the correlates of online student achievement, from the students' perspective, continues to be relevant to maximally effective design of online courses. This quantitative dissertation study focused on the preliminary development of a survey to explore the association between student engagement, satisfaction, acceptance of technology, and self-efficacy with students' final grades in an online accounting course. Potential associations, measured by the Spearman rho correlation coefficient, were found between student engagement and final grades, as well as student satisfaction and final grades and student self-efficacy and final grades. Students' acceptance of technology showed a weak relationship to final grades. This initial pilot holds promise for continuing to develop data-gathering vehicles to better understand the correlation of online students' experiential variables to their overall academic achievement.

Presenter(s)

Amanda Maz
Northcentral University
San Diego, CA, USA

My name is Amanda Maz and I live in Richmond, Virginia with my husband and our 12-year-old son. I attended Virginia Commonwealth University where I earned my bachelor’s degree in accounting. I also have a master’s degree in accounting from Strayer University, and a PhD in accounting from National University. I have nineteen years of accounting experience working for small businesses, large corporations, and non-for-profit organizations, and am currently working as an Accounting Manager for small businesses. Additionally, I have four years of experience teaching and designing accounting courses in higher education and am currently working as part-time faculty at Strayer University. During my time teaching, I became interested in the factors that can contribute to student success in the online accounting classroom and the actions I can take as an instructor to improve pass rates. I enjoy merging my work experience in classroom instruction by giving examples in discussion forms or during live lectures to help students understand how to apply accounting concepts to real-world situations they may encounter in the workforce. In my spare time, I enjoy hiking, reading, and spending time with my family.

Mary Dereshiwsky
Northern Arizona University
Flagstaff, AZ, USA

Marie Bakari
Northcentral University
San Diego, CA, USA