Students’ perspective on knowledge quality in eLearning context: a qualitative assessment

The purpose of this paper is to identify the unique d

mensions associated with knowledge quality (KQ) based on students’ perception in an educational institution.

Purposive sampling was used to select students who were active users of the electronic-Learning (eLearning) system at two faculties in a single university. The qualitative data gathering employed an unstructured open-ended questionnaire distributed to the 52 selected participants.

The qualitative findings unearth the students’ perspective about quality of knowledge gained from content used in online courses. In total, 34 underlying sub-dimensions of KQ emerged, which were categorized into five KQ dimensions: intrinsic KQ, contextual KQ, representational KQ, accessible KQ, and actionable KQ.

The findings provide an insight to educators to consider KQ dimensions in providing quality knowledge to students in an eLearning environment.

Previous studies have used information quality dimensions to measure KQ because of a lack of conceptualization of KQ that leads to difficulties in operationalizing this construct. In this study, a conceptual and operational definition of KQ, in the context of eLearning, is proposed based on grounded data from students participating in an online learning environment.