Historically, the first online course was launched in 1986 by John F. Kennedy University in California – USA, and it was popular in some large universities: MIT, Stanford, Harvard,… with websites such as: edx, Coursera, Khan Academy…Over the past few year, with the era of industrial 4.0, online education has experienced an explosive growth rate and created huge revenue for investors. The top countries in the world for online training, including: USA, India, UK, Korea, Malaysia, and China, with the number of people enrolled online in the world about 70 million (2017). According to Class Central statistics, by the end of 2018, 11,400 online courses were launched, coming from more than 900 universities around the world.
Vietnam is one of the Asian countries that catch up and thrive online training. In 2017, conformable to University World News, Asia is the second largest market in the world for online training and Vietnam ranks among the top 10 Asian countries in this field. Also in this year, according to Ambient Insight, Vietnam is the country with the highest growth rate of online learning with 44.3%. Basing on vnexpress.net (11/2018), the four major online education service groups are now foreign language courses, exam review programs / general knowledge lectures or skill courses. This paper will mainly conduct in outstanding representatives of Vietnam e-learning market, typically: Edumall, Kyna, and Topica.
There are several benefits come to mind when we mention about online courses. The key aspects are convenient and flexible time, and learners can access online courses at anywhere: at home or at public Internet locations whenever they want to learn. Furthermore, students not have to pay for school construction revenues or transport expenses. If there is a need to pay tuition fees, they absolutely can pay online quickly. The online environment is extremely suitable for participants who are introvert, lack self – confidence or may be scared by the public setting of a face – to – face classroom, because it can provide a comfortable venue (Clark-Ibáñez and Scott 2008).
Compare to face-to-face learning, lacking of social interaction, instructional content, technical problems, time, motivation, or copyright are the most cited reasons for dissatisfaction of online learning environment (Muilenburg & Berge, 2005). Some online course websites also provided interactive features directly betweent lecturers and learners through online cat software, but it was not as full and lively as traditional education form. Those drawbacks could influence student’s decision making to determine whether they should enroll/ keep studying online course or not.
In addition, the dropout rate of people who enrolled in online courses, are more likely to higher than those taught in traditional classes (Patterson, and McFadden, 2009). Studies show that student’s satisfaction with their online learning experience can effect directly to this dropout rate (Park, J. & Choi, H. J, 2009). While almost educational institutions and instructors more concern about the satisfactions of students, there are few researches that related to what key factors contributing to student’s satisfaction with online courses.
