Identifying participant perceptions and satisfaction
From The Learning Engineer's Knowledgebase
The identification of participants' perceptions and satisfaction are a category of research questions that identify a person's perceptions related to an educational product, which can be difficult to otherwise observe as a third party. A person's perceptions of educational activities, technologies, and possible actions are important influential factors in how a person learns.
Definition
Identifying participants' perceptions and satisfactions is a set of research questions that focus on what a person sees, interprets and feels about an educational product or learning experience. Additionally, a person's perceived value, satisfaction, and usability of a product is likewise influential in a person's achievement of intended learning outcomes.
A perception is purely subjective to the learner and is only their interpretation. Perceptions are not directly observable by a third party. Perceptions of learning or behavior may also not be directly correlated with actual learning or behavior. For example, a person may think they learned a new skill from an educational activity, but may not actually be able to perform when asked to do a task related to that learning. Similarly, a person may perceive that they cannot use a technology or have a high level of frustration with the technology, but in actuality be able to adequately use the technology after trying.
Although they are subjective, perceptions of participants are useful to measure as they are a person's primary awareness about activities, concepts, skills, and knowledge and can influence behavior, willingness to participate, and processes of learning.
Knowing whether someone "liked", was satisfied, or felt like they learned with something is useful to know as an evaluator and can influence the participant's behavior. However, perceptions of value or satisfaction should not be the only measure of whether a person actually achieved a learning objective. Learning objectives are always written in active terms so that the evidence of their achievement can be directly observed by a third party.
Common Research Questions
In this category of research questions, the actual questions typically take one or more of the following general forms:
- What is a participant's level of perceived satisfaction or perceived value from the educational product or experience?
- What does the participant perceive as possible actions with or uses for the educational product?
- How does the participant interpret the possible actions that they can take or behaviors that they should do within the educational activity?
- What things or functions does a participant perceive with an educational technology or product?
- What did the participant think or perceive that they learned from the experience?
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