The role of social and academic environment on student learning and satisfaction: A case study at Hanoi University

This study aims to present a case study of the role of social and academic environment on student learning and satisfaction at Hanoi University. A student satisfaction model is proposed and confirmed based on the survey data and statistic from Hanoi University students. The model was applied to identify and analyze factors which affect the final results as well as graduates’ satisfaction. Practical recommendations are then submitted to Hanoi University to improve student satisfaction.

VAI TRÒ CỦA MÔI TRƯỜNG XÃ HỘI VÀ HỌC THUẬT

ĐỐI VỚI HỌC TẬP VÀ SỰ HÀI LÒNG CỦA SINH VIÊN:

MỘT NGHIÊN CỨU ĐIỂN MẪU TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC HÀ NỘI

Lơng Ngc Minh, Hoàng Gia Th, Nguyn Th Minh Ti
n, Trn Quang Anh *

Trường Đại học Hà Nội

* Tác giả liên hệ, e-mail: anhtq@hanu.edu.vn

xem là khách hàng chính sử dụng dịch vụ giáo dục

của nhà trường Nghiên cứu về sự hài lòng của sinh

viên trong môi trường giáo dục ñại học Việt Nam có

ý nghĩa quan trọng trong việc nâng cao chất lượng

dịch vụ giáo dục ñại học của Việt Nam Bài viết này

trình bày một nghiên cứu ñiển mẫu về vai trò của

môi trường xã hội và học thuật ñối với học tập và sự

hài lòng của sinh viên tại Trường Đại học Hà Nội

Bài viết ñưa ra một mô hình sự hài lòng của sinh

viên và ñánh giá mô hình này bằng số liệu ñiều tra

khảo sát thực tế tại Trường Đại học Hà Nội Mô hình

này ñược áp dụng ñể phân tích những nhân tố ảnh

hưởng ñến kết quả học tập và mức ñộ hài lòng của

sinh viên, từ ñó ñưa ra một số kiến nghị nhằm nâng

cao chất lượng dịch vụ ñào tạo của nhà trường

Thông qua phân tích kết quả khảo sát, bài báo cũng

ñã vẽ nên một bức tranh toàn cảnh về ñánh giá của

sinh viên ñối với các hoạt ñộng của Trường Đại học

Hà Nội, phân tích các ñiểm mạnh, ñiểm yếu trong hệ

thống ñào tạo của nhà trường Đây là những thông

tin quan trọng giúp nhà trường cải tiến chất lượng

giảng dạy trong thời gian tới

T khóa: Sự hài lòng của sinh viên, mô hình

phương trình cấu trúc, hành vi của sinh viên, môi

trường học thuật, môi trường xã hội

Abstract: In higher education, students are often

viewed as the main customers who use training services; therefore research on student satisfaction model in higher education plays a meaningful and important role in improving quality of training services in Vietnam This study aims to present a case study of the role of social and academic environment on student learning and satisfaction at Hanoi University A student satisfaction model is proposed and confirmed based on the survey data and statistic from Hanoi University students The model was applied to identify and analyze factors which affect the final results as well as graduates’ satisfaction Practical recommendations are then submitted to Hanoi University to improve student satisfaction A descriptive analysis of experiment survey results has portrayed an overall picture of student evaluation of Hanoi University’s activities, pointing out the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges in the training system

of the university This is significantly important information to support the university administrators

in upgrading and improving teaching quality in the near future

Keywords: student satisfaction, structural

equation modeling, student behavior, academic environment

THE ROLE OF SOCIAL AND ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENT

ON STUDENT LEARNING AND SATISFACTION:

A CASE STUDY AT HANOI UNIVERSITY

1 Introduction

After a long period of highly centrally-planned

economy, Vietnam has changed to a

socialist-oriented market economy through a ‘doi moi’

(renewal policy) since the 1980s The national

educational system has been starting to transform

itself in the new direction where education is to

satisfy not only government organizations' demands but also other economic components' In

2005, the Vietnamese Government issued a resolution on “Innovative, fundamental and comprehensive reform of the higher education for the period of 2006-2020" (Resolution No

05/NQ-CP dated 02 November, 2005) One of the most important directions in the higher education

reform plan is a shift from elite education to mass

education Previously, the number of universities

in Vietnam was small, mainly public universities

with limited training courses Therefore, attracting

learners or training to meet the needs of the

society has not been paid due attention to in

tertiary education in Vietnam Currently, the

number of universities in Vietnam has increased;

and the educational programs in each university

are also varied From 1990-2012 more than 200

new universities were established in Vietnam and

also the number of joint training programs with

foreign University has been rapidly increasing

The competition among the universities in

improving the quality of education and attracting

students become more evident

Investigating the role of social and academic

environment on student learning and satisfaction

is an important activity in modern higher

education The level of student satisfaction as well

as its impact factors is always considered as

important information to the management board

for making decisions Adee (1997) analyzed the

relationship between customer satisfaction and

perceived quality in higher education, he also

pointed out the importance of this relationship in

higher education environment Adee proposed a

model in which student satisfaction depends on

the disconfirmation of student expectation when

they use the education service Also, student

satisfaction has an impact on student’s decision of

re-use of this service after graduation In his

research, Voss C et al (2005) proposed a customer

satisfaction model, in which activities of human

resource management and production process

have an impact on employee satisfaction and

service quality; at the same time, employee

satisfaction and service quality have positive

impacts on customer satisfaction The paper

confirmed that this relationship exists in higher

education environment Helgesen and Nesset

(2007) studied the factors which influence student

loyalty in higher education This research

proposed a structural model which illustrates the

relationship between service quality, facilities,

university image, student satisfaction and student loyalty Alves and Raposo (2007) proposed a student satisfaction model, in which they emphasized there exists a relationship between student expectation, university image, student satisfaction and student loyalty They also pointed out that student loyalty has an impact on student behavior after their graduation, such as promoting the university or introducing the university to their friends (words of mouth) One of the problems of this model is that it draws too many relationships between model’s components This leads to the difficulty of using this model in practice, such as difficult to give suggestions to the university upon this model Lin C-P, Tsai YH (2008) analyzed data from a private school in Taiwan and confirmed a student loyalty model, in which student loyalty is influenced by perceived quality

of teaching services, perceived quality of administrative services and perceived signal of retention This work uses the perceived quality made by students as the representation of the quality of that service This work used a procedure

of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) for data analysis (Anderson, 1988) In this model focuses

on student loyalty; therefore, the student satisfaction model is not mentioned in the model Until now, the research on the role of social and academic environment on student learning and satisfaction in the real environment of Vietnam's tertiary education is still very limited The above satisfaction models can not be applied directly to the Vietnam higher education environment because the organizational structure

in Vietnam higher education is different We need

a student satisfaction model that matches with the organizational structure of university in Vietnam,

so that the model can be practically used in Vietnam This study aims to present a case study

of the role of social and academic environment on student learning and satisfaction at Hanoi University

The major contributions of this paper are three-fold Firstly, it proposes a relevant student satisfaction model with respective hypotheses

Then, thanks to experiment survey data from

Hanoi University students, the model is confirmed

to be appropriate Secondly, the model was

applied to analyze factors affecting students’

academic results as well as satisfaction of

graduates This is the basis to submit

recommendations to the University to improve

student satisfaction effectively Thirdly, the survey

results have portrayed an overall picture about

student evaluation of Hanoi University’s activities,

revealing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and

challenges in the training system of Hanoi

University They are significantly important to

support university administrators in upgrading and

improving teaching quality in the near future

The rest of this paper is organized as follows

Section 2 presents research design, including

proposed hypotheses and modeling and research

methodology Section 3 analyzes descriptive

statistics of the factors in the proposed model

Section 4 discusses the model confirmation

analysis Section 5 concludes the paper and

discusses the direction for the future work

2 Research Design

2.1 Hypotheses

Higher education is a service, in which the

university provides education services and

students who are customers take advantages from

these services In the process of using education

services, students have the direct interaction with

teachers Thus, the experience with teachers such

as student - teacher interaction and teaching

methodology used in classes result in student

achievements, including knowledge and skill

development As a result, the following hypothesis

is proposed:

H1: Experience with teacher has a positive

impact on student achievement

The education programs describe the

knowledge and skill structure that teachers want to

transfer to the students Students take one of the

education programs at university under the

instruction of teachers Therefore, the education

program design and structure, as well as lesson

plans and learning activities will affect student achievement of knowledge and skill development This leads to hypothesis 2:

H2: Education program has a positive impact

on student achievement

Beside the classroom learning hours, students must also communicate with administrators in university to register the course, inquire or consult the program Moreover, facilities including classrooms, learning device is one of the important elements of the higher education environment The facilities help teachers interact with students more effectively Therefore, supportive environment such as facilities, administration social interaction in campus environment will affect student achievement, resulting in hypothesis 3:

H3: Supportive environment has a positive

impact on student achievement

Customer satisfaction is created during the customer experience of using the products or services In higher education, student satisfaction

is obtained when student feel that they achieve new knowledge and skill and personal development during their time in the university Hypothesis 4 is presented below:

H4: Student achievement has a positive impact

on student satisfaction

Customer satisfaction may lead to whether customer will continue to use this product or service or not In higher education environment, although students are one-time customers, their satisfaction of education service maybe an important reason that they continue to promote the university, introduce to their relatives and friends

to study in the university or establish cooperation between students and the university after graduation such as providing job opportunities, scholarships or research So, there comes hypothesis 5:

H5: Student satisfaction has a positive impact

on student behavior of promoting and cooperation with the university after graduation

When student feel that they learn a lot during

their study in the university, they probably tend to

promote the university, introduce their relatives

and friends to study in the university or establish

cooperation between student and the university

too So, hypothesis 6 is made:

H6: Student achievement has a positive impact

on student behavior of promoting and cooperation

with the university after graduation

The above hypotheses are presented in the

following student satisfaction model in Figure 1: Figure 1 Student satisfaction model 2.2 Structural Equation Modeling

Figure 2 Structural equation modeling for student satisfaction model

To test these hypotheses, this paper plans to

use the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM)

approach to analyze how real data fit the proposed

model SEM is a generally statistical modeling

technique which is widely used in the science of

behavioral research It can be seen as a

combination of factor analysis, regression and

path analysis The SEM is considered to work

well with structural theory, which is presented by

the hidden elements (Anderson, 1988) Based on

the model, this paper designs student satisfaction

model with added observed variables in the form

of SEM as shown in Figure 2

The factors Teacher, Program and Support are

represented by the variables ξ1, ξ2 and ξ3,

respectively These variables are latent variables,

their values and the parameters λ and δ decide the value of the observed variable X using the following equation (1)

δ

ξ + Λ

The factors Achievement, Satisfaction and Behavior are represented by the variables η1, η2 and η3 These variables are also latent variables, their values and the parameters λ and ε make the value of the observed variable Y using the equation (2)

ε

η + Λ

Moreover, the variables ξ1, ξ2 and ξ3 are exogenous variables, while the variables η1, η2 and

η3 are endogenous variables The cause-effect relationship between these exogenous variables

and endogenous variables are represented by the

parameters γ and ζ, and the relationships among

endogenous variables are represented by the

parameters β and ζ These relationships form the

following equation (3)

ς ξ η

Given the observed variables X, Y measured

by a survey data, the SEM will find all the

parameters which make the equations (1), (2) and

(3) best fit the survey data

2.3 Student Perceived Experience and

Satisfaction Survey

Hanoi University has conducted surveys on

graduates from all teaching in English programs

The questionnaire has been selected from list of

examining queries National Survey of Student

Engagement (NSSE) This is a testing tool to

assess participation level related to academic in

universities, colleges in Canada and the United

States Results of survey supporting administrative and supervisor teachers are measures to evaluate their own student participants The first NSSE was experimented in 1999 and there are more 1.400 universities and colleagues in Canada and the United Stated who have accepted to take part in since NSSE was first run in 2000 (National Survey of Student Engagement, 2012)

The survey questionnaire list NSSE 2013 has

19 query groups related to experience and satisfaction of student during training course in university In each questionnaire group, there are about 4 to 10 multiple choice questions Quantities

of answer options for each question are 4 or 7 After researching and considering typical features

of specialized major in Hanoi University, 9 question groups which are the most appropriate to condition and environment of Hanoi University are selected, covering 51 single questions Description of questions is shown in Table 1 below

Table 1 Groups of questions in the survey questionnaire

questions answers # of

8 Knowledge, Skills, Ability, and other characteristics (KSAO)

3 Descriptive Analysis

3.1 Data Collection and Processing

The authors have conducted a survey on

graduate students of 6 main majors which are

instructed in English including Faculty of

Information and Technology, Business Administration, Tourism Management, Accounting, Financial Banking and International Studies Department in Hanoi University 439 samples were collected Quantity of collected response of each major is presented in Table 2

Table 2 Number of collected responses of

each major/studies

In Hanoi University, Financial Banking and

Accounting are the most crowded departments In

contrast, Tourism Management and International

Studies are the least crowded faculties In 439

collected responses, there are 94 ones which were

conducted by male and 345 ones by female Also,

this is typical gender ratio in Hanoi University

All collected responses are imported into Excel

file, where each column is labeled by a question

Each row contains an answer result of a student

Each question is notated by group of question and

its order in this group For example, in Higher

Order Learning (HOL) group, there are 5

questions, whose notation is respectively HOL1,

HOL2, HOL3, HOL4, and HOL5

Due to answer result of question group, Quality

of Social Interaction (QSI) has 7 values where as

in other group, there are only 4 answers To unify outcomes of each question group, the research has normalized value of QST queries from 1 to 7 into

1 to 4, normalization formula is as below:

2

1 +

−

= QSI

SPSS and LISREL statistical tools are used to compute the descriptive statistics, variable correlation and solving the SEM problem

3.2 Descriptive Statistics

To compute the descriptive statistics of all factors in our model, the authors replaced the values of questions in a group by the mean value

of that group For the case of KSAO, we grouped the 10 survey questions into smaller group including: English (ENG), Knowledge (KNL) and Skill (SKI), as shown in Table 3

Table 3 The groups of questions in KSAO

Group Questions in KSAO

English (ENG) KSAO1, KSAO2 Knowledge

(KNL)

KSAO3, KSAO4, KSAO8, KSAO9

Skill (SKI) KSAO5, KSAO6, KSAO7,

KSAO10 This activity can reduce the number of factors from 51 to 11 The author then assigned the groups to each factor in the model The assignment is shown in Table 4

Table 4 Assignment of questions to each factor

Teacher

(TCH) Program (PRG) Support (SUP) Achievement (ACH) Satisfaction (SAT) Behavior (BHV)

SFI, ETP HOL, RIL, PDS SEN, QSI ENG, KNL, SKI SAT1 SAT2, SAT3

Let the variables TCH, PRG, SUP, ACH, SAT

and BHV respectively represent for the factors

Teacher, Program, Support, Achievement,

Satisfaction and Behavior in our model These

variables were computed as the mean of the

groups assigned to them The authors calculated the descriptive statistics values of TCH, PRG, SUP, ACH, SAT and BHV values Collected outcomes are shown on Table 5

Table 5 Descriptive Statistics

N Minimum Maximum Mean Std Deviation

Valid N (listwise) 410

As can be seen, in 3 factors Teacher (TCH),

Program (PRG) and Support (SUP), students give

highest rate to Support (SUP) factor – accounting

for 2.70 whereas factor Teacher (TCH) get the

lowest rate which stands for 2.46 As a result,

developing teacher team requires more focus and

attention in the near future

The descriptive statistics for different majors

are shown in Figure 3 From this Figure, we can

see that teachers in Tourism program are most highly evaluated The Business Administration and International Studies programs get highest scores while the Finance and Banking program get lowest score Students in Business Administration and Tourism programs think that they acquire the best knowledge Students from International Studies program are the most satisfied with the program

Figure 3 Descriptive statistics for different majors

4 Model Confirmation Analysis

4.1 Variables Correlation

SPSS Statistics tool was used to calculate

correlation between TCH, PRG, SUP, ACH, SAT and BHV values Collected outcomes are shown

on Table 6

Table 6 Correlations

TCH

PRG

SUP

ACH

SAT

BHV

** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed)

As can be seen on Table 6, there are some

typical features: Firstly, ACH factor has big

difference with TCH, PRG, SUP, ACH, SAT and

BHV factors The correlation has the value of 0.4

and more (Correlation with TCH factors is little

smaller but it is possible to round up 0.39 into 0.4)

Besides, SAT and BHV factor has big difference

between their correlations (0.496) Consequently,

H1, H2, H3, H4, H5 and H6 assumptions are

initially confirmed

Secondly, SAT factor does not have direct

correlations with TCH factor (0.215), PRG factor

(0.256) and SUP factor (0.310) Similarly, BHV factor

also does not have direct correlations with TCH

factor (0.218), PRG factor (0.215) and SUP factor (0.273) All correlation value is smaller than 0.4 Therefore, the correlation is the first step to state that model shown on Figure 2 is reasonable

To be clearer on the affirmative sentence of the model, the researcher will use SEM solution in the following sections

4.2 Model Confirmation

We assigned the list of observed variables (X, Y) to the factors in the SEM for student satisfaction model as follows: X11=SFI, X12=ETP, X21=HOL, X22=RIL, X23=PDS, X31=SEN,

X32=QSI, Y11=ENG, Y12=KNL, Y13=SKI,

Y21=SAT1, Y31=SAT2 and Y32=SAT3 SIMPLIS

programming language was used to present the

SEM problem in LISREL The obtained results

after running SIMPLIS program on LISREL tool

is demonstrated in Figure 4

Figure 4 The obtained result of SEM

In this program, the maximum number of

iterations is set up at 250; however, only 35

iterations are used to get the above outcome This

means that student satisfaction model has quickly

converged to a positive result Also, it proved that

student satisfaction model and hypothesis

recommended in section 2 are highly accepted

From the resulted model in Figure 4, it can be

seen that student evaluate relationship between

teachers and students (FSI, 0.33) rather than

training method (ETP, 0.29) In term of program’s

factors HOL, RIL and PDS, student assessments

are quite the same (respectively 0.25, 0.29 and

0.27) Students evaluate facilities, administrative

procedure department (SEN, 0.37) higher than

other social interaction in university (QSI, 0.28) It

is suggested that Hanoi University should pay

more attention and effort to the improvement of

QST in the near future In terms of behavior,

students tend to be ready for promoting Hanoi University (SAT2, 0.61) rather than implementing cooperation with University Administrates (SAT3, 0.46) Possibly, when students graduate, they have not had the ideas in their mind how they will incorporate with university in the near future yet Besides, students assess English level, major knowledge and skills that they achieved are quite equivalent The statistics represent for respectively 0.32, 0.39 and 0.38 It has shown that outcome result of Hanoi University student is very good According to relationships in Figure 4, Achievement has a big influence on Satisfaction (0.4835) In other words, two factors have large correlation Therefore, effect of Satisfaction and Achievement elements on Behavior are quite similar (0.3658 and 0.3266 respectively) The main structural equation is as follow:

Support rogram

Teacher t

Achievemen = 0 3152 ∗ + 0 3226 ∗ P + 0 0977 ∗ (5)

According to equation (5), contributions of

Teacher and Program to Achievement of students

are about approximately (for example, for

Achievement are 0.3152 and 0.3226) Besides,

they are significantly higher than contribution of

Support (0.09774) In other words, to increase

level of satisfaction of student efficiently, it is

necessary to invest in improving teacher qualifications and program quality In practice, the cost of program development is much lower than the cost of human resource development; therefore, the investment on academic program is the most efficient

5 Conclusion

In this study, the researcher has reviewed the

literature related to customer satisfaction model in

higher education Based on typical features of

Hanoi University, hypotheses and student

satisfaction model were proposed Also, the SEM

method has been implemented to confirm the

student satisfaction modeling and the hypotheses

Experiment data including 439 samples was

collected by a survey of specialized major

students at Hanoi University in 2013-2014

Analyzed outcomes have shown that student

satisfaction model and the recommended

hypotheses are totally accepted

This model makes a significant contribution to

Hanoi University in explaining and clarifying the

factors that have big influence on student’s results

as well as their satisfaction to university

According to the model, contributions of teacher

team and program quality to study outcome and

student’s satisfaction are quite equivalent and

remarkable higher than contribution of supporting

manipulation In other words, to increase level of

satisfaction of student efficiently, it is essential to

invest in improving teacher qualifications and

program quality

In additions, in terms of statistics, model has

shown strength, weakness in current field of

Hanoi University Interactions between teacher

and student are evaluated more importantly than

teaching methodology of teachers Social

interactions in university have not assessed as well

as facilities or administrative procedures

department Students evaluate that they achieved

English qualification, specialized knowledge and

soft skills equally It means that graduated Hanoi

University students are comprehensive, suitable with standard output of program and meet social demands

A limitation of this paper is that the experiment data is mainly collected from survey data of students at Hanoi University In the future, the authors will expand this research to the data of the other universities in the higher education system

in Vietnam

REFERENCES

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2 Adee A (1997) ‘Linking student satisfaction and service quality perceptions: the case of university education’ European Journal of Marketing Vol 31, no

7, pp 528~540

3 Alves H, Raposo MR (2007), Conceptual Model of Student Satisfaction in Higher Education ， Total Quality Management ，2007(18), pp 571-588

4 Helgesen O, Nesset E ， (2007), Images, Satisfaction and Antecedents: Drivers of Student Loyalty? A Case Study of a Norwegian University College ， Corporate Reputation Review，2007, 10,

pp 38-59

5 Lin C-P, Tsai YH (2008), Modeling Educational Quality and Student Loyalty: A Quantitative Approach Based ，Quality and Quantity，2008 (42), pp 397-415

6 National Survey of Student Engagement (2012) Promoting Student Learning and Institutional Improvement: Lessons from NSSE at 13 Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research

7 Voss C et al, (2005) ‘Managerial choice and performance in service management - a comparison of private sector organizations with further education colleges’, Journal of Operations Management ，23(2), 179~195