Student satisfaction with online learning in the presence of ambivalence: Looking for the will-o'-the-wisp

The authors contend that ambivalence students feel toward online courses modifies the dimensionality by which they evaluate their learning experiences. The data from this study show that as student ambivalence increases, so do the number of elements they use to evaluate their courses. As the student view of a course becomes more complex those elements by which they make judgments become much more independent of each other. The authors hypothesize that models students develop to evaluate course quality is a function of agency, psychological contracts, ambivalence, prototype theory, intuition, idealized cognitive models and satisfaction.

► We study how online students evaluate their learning experiences.
► Increased online student ambivalence increases more complex student evaluations.
► Decreased online student ambivalence results in more general, related evaluations.