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The demand for e-learning in higher education is rising, competition is increasing, and universities are investing significant resources towards improving the quality of their e-learning offerings. Thus, effective quality measures for e-learning are urgently required. With the aim of following the total quality management practices of raising students' satisfaction and continuous improvement, a performance-evaluation model was applied in a sample of business students. The application of this model was useful for selecting the quality items that most urgently require improvement to achieve student satisfaction and for identifying the items of surplus resource investment, thereby helping to provide the means to minimise resource wastage. This way, an effective and efficient improvement plan to enhance the efficient use of resources in e-learning and to meet an adequate level of quality was established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper a two-year field study was carried out to analyse how satisfaction differs across the traditional and blended learning methods. Altogether, 21 courses for graduate and postgraduate engineering students were evaluated. Several variables and their relationship with student satisfaction in the first year, with all courses delivered in traditional mode, were compared with student satisfaction in the second year, which had the same courses delivered in blended mode. Results suggest that student satisfaction is greater in blended courses than in face-to-face courses. This can be explained because the levels of class attendance, motivation and collaboration with classmates were higher in blended learning than in classroom instruction. In addition, class attendance, access to teachers, collaboration with classmates and motivation were found to be leading predictors of student satisfaction in blended environments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]