Measuring usage versus preferences for online Study materials among business-majored undergraduates

As online learning becomes a recurrent component of higher education, there have been growing interests in the interaction between
students and educational resources within digital environments so as to understand and facilitate students’ initiative in managing those resources. The present study is an explorative inquiry into the relationships between students’ self-reported preferences of
study materials, their actual usage of those materials and their learning performances in online learning. It focuses on analysing
the learning management system’s log files, test results and students’ responses to an evaluative survey of a bachelor business
course at a large Belgian university, which was a blended course turned fully online due to the pandemic circumstance. The first
research question concerns how preferences relate to the usage of materials. A cluster analysis was conducted to classify students
based on their perceived interest and actual access to learning resources. The results show three clusters of students with different
preferences and levels of usage towards the four types of study materials provided in the course. However, the majority showed
strong favour for multimedia online learning, with Web lectures being prioritised both in perception and access behaviour, while
discussion boards receive mixed opinions and the lowest actual participation. The second question follows these up by linking the
preference–usage patterns with academic performances. A multivariate analysis of variance was conducted to compare the learning
performances of students with different preference–usage patterns. The results show no significant differences, which means the
students’ preferences and/or usage of study materials has little to no impact on their learning performances in the online course.