Education practice and analysing behaviour of students in a Web‐based learning environment: an exploratory study from China

Tertiary institutions are increasingly providing Web‐based courses to learners both on‐campus and off‐campus, enabling more students to take these courses and get the most recent information. Students can also learn more interactively with the new types of instruction methods used online. Synchronous or asynchronous communication via computer networks can also greatly facilitate the learning process. In order to help the teachers and administrators of the Web‐based learning systems to improve the effectiveness of their instruction and design better online learning software, we have implemented an exploratory investigation of the behaviour of the students in the Web‐based learning environment. Multiple approaches were adopted to collect data, which included questionnaires, posted documents, online logs, interviews and observations. Comparison and analyses are also made between students in different semesters, and under different instruction methods. Some viewpoints on the construction of the Web‐based learning systems are proposed.