Reliability and Validity Evidence of Two Distance Education Learning Environments Scales

Students more than ever are completing their university studies online. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, most higher education providers were required to move to exclusively deliver online curriculum. It is therefore imperative that educators have access to psychometrically sound measures of students' online learning experiences. The reliability and validity properties of the "Distance Education Learning Environments Scale" (DELES) and "Student Engagement in the e-Learning Environment Scale" (SELES) were examined. A sample of 151 Australian undergraduate students completed the DELES and SELES after completing their studies online during 2020 due to COVID-19. Cronbach alpha coefficients, subscale item correlations and linear regression analyses were completed with bootstrapping. Cronbach alpha coefficients for the SELES subscales ranged from 0.68 to 0.93 and 0.75 to 0.96 for the DELES subscales. The within subscale correlations ranged from 0.29 to 0.66 for the SELES (p < 0.001) and 0.30 to 0.68 for the DELES (p < 0.001) and the between subscale correlations ranged from 0.18 to 0.75 (p < 0.001) respectively. Regression findings indicated that the SELES and DELES subscale models each accounted for 56.6% and 22.2% of the unique variance of the DELES Enjoyment, respectively. These findings present important psychometric evidence about the DELES and SELES.