본 연구는 기존의 연구와는 차별적으로 이러닝에서의 상호작용을 학습자-학습자간 상호작용, 학습자-교수자간 상호작용,학습자-컨텐츠구성간 상호작용, 학습자-컨텐츠내용간 상호작용의 네 가지로 세분화하고, 이러한 상호작용 요인과 멀티미디어, 사용자 편의성이 몰입과 강의만족에 미치는 영향을 구조방정식을 이용하여 실증분석 하였다는데 의의가 있다. 또한 제안된 모델을 남녀그룹으로 나누고, 두 그룹간 요인의 경로계수 차이를 통계적으로 분석해봄으로써, 이러닝 사이트의 제작과 운영에 있어 남녀그룹간 차별성 요인과 동질성 요인을 동시에 고려하여, 효과적인 이러닝 사이트를 구축?설계해 나가는데 있어 의미있는 시사점을 제공하고자 하였다.
E-Learning is another way of teaching and learning. E-learning is a networked phenomenon allowing for instant revisions and distribution, and goes beyond training and instruction to the delivery of information and tools to improve performance. The benefits of e-learning are many, including cost-effectiveness, enhanced responsiveness to change, consistency, timely content, flexible accessibility, and providing customer value. The proponents of e-learning stress the importance of using communities of interest to support and enhance the learning process. They also emphasizes that people learn more effectively when they interact and are involved with other people participating in similar endeavors.The purpose of this research is to identify the determinants of attitude in graduateprograms operated only on e-learning basis. This study developed a research model toanalyze the factors explaining the satisfaction level from classes, employing userconvenience, multimedia-quality, interactivity, and flow as major research variables, and collected 439 survey responses from graduate students attending the classes.ㄴr graduate To ensure the content validity of the scales, validated items adapted from prior studies were used to measure the satisfaction level from classes, user convenience, multimediaquality,interactivity, and flow. The respondents indicated their agreement or disagreement with the survey instruments using a five-point Likert-type scale. We also measured demographic variables such as gender, income, education, and organization position.The hypothesized relationships were tested using the structural equation model. Even the goodness-of-fit index, GFI and RMSEA failed to meet the recommended minimum level, these were close enough to suggest that the model fit was reasonably adequate to assess the results for the structural model. Other goodness-of-fit indices were found to exceed the recommended level.The statistical results indicate that the flow influences the satisfaction level, and that interactivity between students and professors has some impact on the flow, but the interactivity among students did not appear to be significant to the level of satisfaction. It was also found that, contrary to our expectation, only the user convenience influences the level of interactivity. The characteristics of the samples may give some partial explanationfor this surprising result. The respondents averaged more than 40 years in age, and had close to average 15 years of work experience, preferring text-based contents tomultimedia-based ones. They also normally study during weekends at home, which maydistract them from interacting among themselves.Within the context of arguing that the exploration of gender issues with respect to e-learning is important, this research also examines the gender differences in path coefficients. To this end, the structural model was tested with the data from entire data sample (i.e., women and men pooled together) and each of the subsamples (i.e., women taken separately and men taken separately). Properties of the causal paths, including standardized path coefficients, the significance of difference, in the hypothesized model, arealso presented, so that we can investigate the relative influences of different dominants,demonstrating how women and men differ in their decision-making processes regarding the flow and satisfaction from usage of e-learning. Some gender variation was found for some path coefficient. This results revealed that men's perception of user convenience was the more significantly direct and more salient than women's in determining the level of interactions between the students and contents.Although multimedia quality was not considered an important direct determinant ofinteraction level in total, it was significant for men compared with women. This finding suggests that pedagogical principles, including principles of developing and packaging content, could be employed in the development and evaluation of e-learning content, to attract male e-learning users.The main contribution of this study is that it successfully uses multi-group structural equation model to examine the impact of gender in the perceptions and decision-making processes for e-learning. But some limitations of this study should be noted. First,investigating the use of e-learning is a relatively new topic for MIS researchers. The findings and their implications presented here were obtained from a single study that targeted a part-time graduate students in Korea. Thus, caution needs to be taken when generalizing our findings to other user groups or different organizational contexts. Second, responses to this study were voluntary and thus inevitably subject to self-selection biases. Conceivably, users who feel comfortable with using e-learning may have been more likely to respond to the survey. Third, this study was conducted with a snapshot research approach, soadditional research efforts are needed to evaluate the validity of the proposed model and our findings. Longitudinal evidences might enhance our understanding of the causality and interrelationships between variables, factors which could be important to user satisfaction of e-learning.