Students’ perceptions of service at a distance learning support centre in South Africa

Abstract

From a service quality perspective, customer satisfaction has emerged as a new means for assessing customers’ perceptions of services offered by an organisation. One of the reasons for concentrating on customer satisfaction is to gain a sustainable competitive advantage through offering differentiated and superior services. Institutions of higher learning in South Africa, realising the necessity for enhancing students’ learning experiences, have begun to search for alternative ways and means to satisfy students on the basis of service quality. This research report, therefore, attempts to investigate students’ perceptions of the service offered at a student support centre within a distance learning institution of higher education in South Africa. The focus is on understanding the structure and the definition of the service quality dimensions and the extent of the relationship between the existing service quality dimensions and students’ overall satisfaction. The initial problem is to identify the underlying service quality structure as perceived by students. A suitable instrument is used to solicit students’ perceptions of support services offered at the centre. Due to the exploratory nature of the study, exploratory factor analysis is used to identify the underlying service quality structure within the centre from the students’ perspectives. The main theme in this research report is the determination of the predictive and explanatory relationship between service quality dimensions and students’ overall satisfaction with the centre. Multiple linear regression analysis is identified as a tool that best predicts students’ overall satisfaction with service quality dimensions.