In recent years, providers of massage therapy education have, in growing numbers, started to use online technologies to support the learning processes of their students. Using a narrative review of the existing online learning literature, this paper aims to provide a solid pedagogical foundation for these early explorations. It identifies five key factors—instructional pedagogy, quality of instruction, interaction and communication, individual learner qualities, and the online interface—that Office Fit Out satisfaction and achievement in the online context. The relationships between those factors and the experience of the online learner are discussed with reference to maximization of student satisfaction and achievement.

Keywords: Massage, distance education, educational models, vocational education, education

In recent years, a tsunami of online teaching has swept through the educational sphere. Massage educators have been relatively slow to adopt online learning methods, but this situation is changing. A number of institutions are now offering massage therapy education either purely online or with a blended style of delivery (that is, with a blend of online and face-to-face components), and a much greater number are considering an exploration of this area. There is a need for a solid pedagogical(1,2) foundation on which to base these early explorations. The present paper seeks to identify factors that underpin student satisfaction and achievement in the online learning context, and then to relate those findings to the field of massage therapy education.

Why has the field of massage therapy not embraced online education before now? Many massage educators cannot see the relevance of online delivery to massage education (the profession is “hands-on,” after all). They believe that online education cannot be as effective as classroom-based learning. That belief is undoubtedly true in the case of practical massage techniques, but missing from the argument is a consideration of the fact that massage education typically involves considerable theoretical learning as well as “hands-on” learning. A recent US Department of Education meta-review provided strong evidence that online learners perform better on average than do classroom-based learners, and learners in blended programs perform better still(3). It may be that the true reasons for the delayed adoption of online education are a lack of experience within the massage education sphere and a subsequent lack of the skills required to effectively design online learning environments and to facilitate learning within them. The need for training and development in this area is urgent.

Among the things that make engaging with online education both challenging and exciting is the rapid development of online applications. Every week, more options are available to educators involved in online education, and a course that aims to utilize the richness which some of these contemporary online applications offer may often be involved in the use of a technology in a way that has not been documented previously. An experimental educational delivery style is therefore called for when online facilitators trial the use of an online application with a group of students in a particular way and then assess how effective the educational experience has been. A further outcome of the present review is a methodology(4) for that ongoing assessment process. Part 2 in this series will discuss the methodology.

Student satisfaction is often taken as a measure of the quality of an educational program. Satisfaction is also considered to be a significant factor contributing to the rate of course completion(5). A comprehensive review of the educational research literature found that, in nearly all cases, students chose to leave their nominated programs of study because of dissatisfaction with elements of their tertiary education experience(6).

Pillay, Irving, and Tones found that students are often less satisfied by online learning environments than by classroom environments(7). Many sources have reported that the rate of attrition in online courses is greater than that in traditional face-to-face courses(8,9). That finding should be of concern to the many educational institutions that are beginning to implement e-learning within their programs.

Interestingly, the dissatisfaction and subsequent attrition are not universal. A study done with students in the State University of New York Learning Network found that completion rates for online courses were not significantly different from those for face-to-face classes, and that online students were at least as satisfied as were their face-to-face counterparts(10). Course completion rates may (unsurprisingly) be related to student satisfaction.

In recent years, blended delivery has become much more popular as an educational strategy. Tang and Byrne found that students involved in blended delivery programs were more satisfied with them than were students taking either purely online or purely face-to-face programs(11). With respect to achievement, multiple studies comparing online, classroom-based, and blended learning approaches have found that students in blended learning environments achieved results that were similar to, or better than, those achieved by students in either face-to-face or online learning environments(3,11,12,a). Student learning seems to be fairly unaffected by the medium of instruction, but blended delivery seems to have a slight edge over purely face-to-face or purely online learning environments.

Factors Involved in Student Satisfaction and Achievement

Whether consumers are satisfied or dissatisfied with a service is related to a comparison between their expectations about what they feel the service provider should offer and their perceptions about what the service provider actually offers(13). In the case of education, if students perceive that the educational experiences provided meet their expectations, then they will be satisfied. If the benefits of the service as perceived by the students do not meet expectations, then they will be dissatisfied. In aiming to improve satisfaction for massage therapy students, it would seem important to consider the expectations of those students.