Satisfaction with online education among students, faculty, and parents before and after the COVID-19 outbreak: Evidence from a meta-analysis

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a unique opportunity for the advancement of online education, as billions of students from 190 countries have been compelled to take classes remotely. The degree of satisfaction is considered one of the major factors in determining the quality of online educational programs. As a result, many empirical studies have been conducted on the level of satisfaction with online education over the last two decades. However, few studies have synthesized previous findings from similar research questions. Therefore, to reinforce statistical power, the study aimed to conduct a meta-analysis to examine satisfaction with online education among students, faculty, and parents before and after the COVID-19 outbreak. A total of 52 studies in English were screened from six academic electronic databases, yielding 57 effect sizes using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis (CMA) software. The results showed that the prevalence of satisfaction with online education among students, faculty, and parents before and after the COVID-19 outbreak was 59.5, 75.3, and 70.7%, respectively, with a significant difference between the satisfaction rates of students and those of their faculty and parents. Besides, we conducted a moderator analysis that found that (1) a significantly higher number of students in the pre-pandemic era in countries with developed digital infrastructure and emergency online learning environments were less satisfied with online education than their counterparts in the post-pandemic era, in countries with developing digital infrastructure, and in non-emergency online learning environments. Additionally, a significantly higher proportion of adult education learners reported being satisfied with online education compared to K-12 and university students. (2) The faculty in the non-emergency situation reported almost double the satisfaction rate of their counterparts in the emergency circumstance. With fewer satisfied remote learning students, efforts could be made by providing well-designed online lessons via faculty and strengthening digital infrastructure via governments to improve student satisfaction.