Exploring Factors Affecting Student Learning Satisfaction during COVID-19 in South Korea

Understanding students' preferences and learning satisfaction during COVID-19 has focused on learning attributes such as self-efficacy, performance, and engagement. Although existing efforts have constructed statistical models capable of accurately identifying significant factors impacting learning satisfaction, they do not necessarily explain the complex relationships among these factors in depth. This study aimed to understand several facets related to student learning preferences and satisfaction during the pandemic such as individual learner characteristics, instructional design elements and social and environmental factors. Responses from 302 students from Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea were collected between 2021 and 2022. Information gathered included their gender, study major, satisfaction and motivation levels when learning, perceived performance, emotional state and learning environment. Wilcoxon Rank sum test and Explainable Boosting Machine (EBM) were performed to determine significant differences in specific cohorts. The two core findings of the study are as follows:1) Using Wilcoxon Rank Sum test, we can attest with 95% confidence that students who took offline classes had significantly higher learning satisfaction, among other attributes, than those who took online classes, as with STEM versus HASS students; 2) An explainable boosting machine (EBM) model fitted to 95.08% accuracy determined the top five factors affecting students' learning satisfaction as their perceived performance, their perception on participating in class activities, their study majors, their ability to conduct discussions in class and the study space availability at home. Positive perceived performance and ability to discuss with classmates had a positive impact on learning satisfaction, while negative perception on class activities participation had a negative impact on learning satisfaction.