Factors Affecting Undergraduate STEM Students' Program Satisfaction: A Chinese Experience

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: International College Students' Experiences in the United States and Home: Perspectives From East Asia

Abstract

With data collected from a sample of 619 Chinese undergraduate students, the structural equation models established in this study indicate that for undergraduate STEM-major students, their course satisfaction fully mediates classroom instruction method’s impact on program satisfaction, while partially mediates the impact of support from faculty members and alternative assessment methods on program satisfaction. Resource and service’s impact on program satisfaction, however, is direct without any mediating effect in between. Meanwhile, alternative assessment methods’ impact on course satisfaction is significantly stronger for first-tier university students than for non-first-tier university students, and there is stronger impact of resource and service on program satisfaction for junior and senior students than for freshmen and sophomores.

Authors

• Tengteng Zhuang, Chinese University of Hong Kong

• Alan Cheung, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

• Winnie Wing Yi Tam, Chinese University of Hong Kong