Understanding Students' Learning in a Web-based Course Using Mixed-method Approach

Over the past several years, the growth of Web-based courses in the higher education sector has been explosive. E-learning based on a Web-based course provides the distributed learning environments that involve the active interactions between suppliers and users, and exchanges of information exclusively through the Internet. Most of the existing empirical research in e-learning is based on the positivist paradigm that aims to quantify social reality. Qualitative methods are particularly good at gaining insight into the processes and events that lead up to the observed variation in e-learning context. In this study, we attempt to apply a mixed methods approach in order to explore how college student manage their learning activities in Webbased courses. A better understanding of college student’s e-learning, through the mixed method, will facilitate the successful design and implementation of Web-based courses.