Teacher Satisfaction with Online Mandarin Chinese Courses at National Taiwan Normal University

Abstract

Many students are interested in learning Mandarin Chinese at the Mandarin Training Center (MTC) which is an extension of National Taiwan Normal University and has become the most popular institution center to study mandarin Chinese in Taiwan. Over the past decade, there has been a significant increase in the number of students who enrolled in online courses throughout the world. Therefore, in 2012 MTC developed an online program known as “MTC Online” which is used to teach mandarin Chinese through the Internet. The mandarin teacher satisfaction with online courses is important in terms of the evaluation of the MTC online courses. The purpose of this study aimed to investigate teacher satisfaction with online mandarin Chinese courses. In order to fulfill the research purpose of this study, in-depth interviews were used for this study to explore the satisfaction of ten online teachers with online courses at mandarin training center in NTNU. The results showed the factors that made teachers feel satisfied with the online courses. The identified satisfaction factors were flexibility, learning technology, multimedia functions, financial saving, interactions, learning resources and student performance. The results of this study also found that five online teachers were satisfied with the online courses while one online teacher felt fairly satisfied with the online courses, furthermore two online teachers were not satisfied with the online courses while two other online teachers were very satisfied with the online courses at MTC. The online teachers indicated the difficulties they have encountered in the online courses and made suggestions about how their satisfaction with online courses could be improved.

Many students are interested in learning Mandarin Chinese at the Mandarin Training Center (MTC) which is an extension of National Taiwan Normal University and has become the most popular institution center to study mandarin Chinese in Taiwan. Over the past decade, there has been a significant increase in the number of students who enrolled in online courses throughout the world. Therefore, in 2012 MTC developed an online program known as “MTC Online” which is used to teach mandarin Chinese through the Internet. The mandarin teacher satisfaction with online courses is important in terms of the evaluation of the MTC online courses. The purpose of this study aimed to investigate teacher satisfaction with online mandarin Chinese courses. In order to fulfill the research purpose of this study, in-depth interviews were used for this study to explore the satisfaction of ten online teachers with online courses at mandarin training center in NTNU. The results showed the factors that made teachers feel satisfied with the online courses. The identified satisfaction factors were flexibility, learning technology, multimedia functions, financial saving, interactions, learning resources and student performance. The results of this study also found that five online teachers were satisfied with the online courses while one online teacher felt fairly satisfied with the online courses, furthermore two online teachers were not satisfied with the online courses while two other online teachers were very satisfied with the online courses at MTC. The online teachers indicated the difficulties they have encountered in the online courses and made suggestions about how their satisfaction with online courses could be improved.