Validating student satisfaction related to persistence, academic performance, retention and career advancement within ODL perspectives

Student satisfaction associated with persistence, academic performance, retention, and its relations to career advancement were examined. It was aimed at measuring service quality (Servqual) dimensions as a foundation of satisfaction and how, in what comportments, they were interrelated. The study was conducted under explanatory-design. Data was collected proportionally and purposively followed by congregating them through unified interviews. Population was 1,814 Universitas Terbuka students domiciled overseas; 350 questionnaires were dispersed, 169 completed. Satisfaction was assessed by examining Servqual dimensions. Importanceperformance analysis (IPA) and customer-satisfaction index (CSI) were applied to measure satisfaction and the level of its importance. Structural equation model (SEM) was then employed to examine influencing variables. Nine hypotheses developed were all validated by the analysis. Responsiveness, assurance, tangible, reliability, and empathy were in harmony to satisfaction. Career advancement, retention, academic performance, and persistence were influenced by satisfaction. Qualitative inquiry implemented afterwards was basically coherent with the quantitative findings.


Introduction
It is observably recognized that some factors lead to student satisfaction and its relations to retention perceived from service quality (Servqual) outlooks (Brown, 2006;Arokiasamy & Abdullah, 2012).The framework of Servqual leading to satisfaction has been formulated by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1988) and elaborated in educational sectors by Tan & Kek (2004), Petruzzelis, D 'Uggento &Romanazzi (2006), andRojas-Méndez, Vasquez-Paraga, Kara, &Cerda-Urrutia (2009).These efforts are imperative since many students who endeavored to earn a degree failed to persist (Robert & Styron, 2009) as the service delivered is below the required standard.To certain extent, this phenomenon is tightly relevant to Universitas Terbuka Indonesia ambiance as documented by Sembiring (2014Sembiring ( & 2015)).
Issues related to persistence, academic performance, and retention as a result of satisfaction in the context of Universitas Terbuka are now indispensably consistent with maintaining the size and growth of the student body.In 2014, for example, it was expected students to total 361,461 nationally and 3,000 regionally; the latter refers to students living overseas.The targeted number nevertheless dropped short of that goal and totaled up to 333.501 nationally and 1,814 regionally (Universitas Terbuka, 2015b).This implies that there was a gap between the initial target and the realization.This fact drives us to explore: Was it as a result of many students having graduated?Was it a question of fewer new students registered?Or, was it due to the fact that many students did not re-register themselves in a consecutive semester consistently?If the latter is the most probable case, we then come to the inquiry of student persistence and/or retention associated with student satisfaction within Servqual configurations.
The primary aim of the study is therefore to evaluate the Servqual implemented and its dimensions as they were expected and experienced by students.It is also significant to reveal the crossing

Related Literature and Framework
Servqual and satisfaction, even in the educational sector, attract many scholars in a wide variety of disciplines (Kitcharoen, 2004).The dimensions of Servqual mentioned previously: reliability, assurance, tangibility, empathy, and responsiveness were adopted in this inquiry.Previous work by Tileng, Wiranto and Latuperissa (2013) gave confidence to utilize this basis within Universitas Terbuka context.The origin of the study was Servqual and satisfaction integrated with prominent constructs within retention and/or persistence (Tinto, 1982(Tinto, , 1993(Tinto, & 1997) ) and attrition (Bean, 1983(Bean, & 1985)).It makes such a progress in understanding elements of Servqual, satisfaction and retention (Hanaysha, Abdullah & Warokka, 2011).Furthermore, Ilias, Hasan and Rahman (2008), Mailany (2011) and Martirosyan, Saxon and Wanjohi (2014) recognized that evaluation on satisfaction leads to increasing academic performance.Students also search for a program that will prepare them for more promising and great career advancement in their future.It is then believed that many students expected to gain more established forthcoming jobs (Archambault, 2008).
Having considered these expectations, it becomes just right to introduce an integrated structure of this study by uniting all relevant factors in Servqual framework, satisfaction, and associated possible links as the conceptual framework of this research (Figure 1).This conceptual framework would be a tool for measuring student satisfaction and its inferences viewed from Servqual outlooks.This would allow ODL institutions to change important aspects of their operations to accommodate student expectations.It might also focus on institutional directions to fulfil student needs extensively so that the universities can maintain and make progress on the size and growth of their student bodies as it was prearranged.
Before establishing the operational framework as a furtherance of the conceptual one, it is worth noting that student satisfaction is conceptually determined by Servqual.It is operationally demarcated on five dimensions (reliability, assurance, tangible, empathy, and responsiveness).Each dimension is further elaborated accordingly into attributes.Moreover, satisfaction is operationally a pointer to persistence, academic performance, retention, and career advancement.To ease the research design, all variables engaged associated with their dimensions are systematically arranged as shown in Table 1.
Table 1 is utilized as a basis to develop an instrument in the form of questionnaire.All questions incorporated in X, as the independent variables (X 11 -X 53 ), are answered two times by respondents simultaneously.The first and second answers measure satisfaction and its level of importance.The rest are answered by respondents to view the impact of satisfaction related to persistence, academic performance, retention, and career advancement from students' perspectives.• Future career • Civic contribution Y 14 : I do believe that after completing my degree here then my career will be more improved Y 15 : I am happy to contribute through alumni association At this stage, it is on the right spot to establish the study's operational framework in accordance with the structure of the conceptual framework (Figure 1) and the essence of variables involved (Table 1) and then followed by their attributes.They are all displayed diagrammatically in Figure 2.This figure will be used as the basis for determining the methodology used, research design, and the way on how to ensure the analysis accomplished further.

Methodology, Design and Hypotheses
This study utilized mixed-methods, i.e., explanatory-design (Creswell & Clark, 2011).Technically, the research was prearranged to be implemented under a quantitative approach first and then followed by a qualitative sequence.Two instruments were developed; a questionnaire for quantitative purposes and a list of questions for in-depth interviews and/or focus group discussions to be analyzed qualitatively.
The instrument consists of 2x20 questions related to satisfaction and its level of importance, plus ten additional questions to validate whether or not persistence, academic performance, retention and career advancement were relatable to satisfaction.This approach is meant to address the conceptual and operational framework, research design, hypotheses, survey and sampling techniques, data collection and processing, and finally drawing the conclusions quantitatively.Serially, these will be unified with the results obtained from the qualitative approach.

Results and Arguments
Before conferring the outcomes, it is convenient to represent the main characteristics of the respondents of the study as shown in Table 2, as it will certainly enhance our perspectives on the end results.This picture would also give us broader insights of the context and the methodology used.The results of analyses are detailed in the following clarification, table, and figures.).This implies that they are all validated positively and directly by the analysis.Before describing the end results, it is worth revealing satisfaction level and its importance degree obtained from IPA-CSI structures.The analysis generates the spots of Servqual components with respect to related quadrants to comprehend the degree of their importance (Figure 4). Figure 4 below has four quadrants.They are: (1) Concentrate Here, (2) Maintain Performance, (3) Low Priority, and (4) Possible Overkill; following Wong et al. (2011).
Quadrant 1 (Concentrate Here) has eight important attributes that should be seriously noted.They are: (i) Handling Complaints, (ii) Communication, (iii) Tutorial, (iv) Access to Management, (v) Attention, (vi) Module, (vii) Support from Faculty, and (viii) Student Service.This quadrant indicates that satisfaction is at a low level whereas the degree of its importance is high.The University must pay attention to these eight critical facts and put them in a top priority so that student expectations can be fulfilled and they are more likely to complete their study as intended.
Quadrant 2 (Maintain Performance) includes four points that should be recognized.They are: (i) Examination, (ii) Information in Web, (iii) Schedule, and (iv) Registration.This quadrant is a symptom of both satisfaction and the degree of their importance being concurrently placed at a high level.The University, therefore, must take care of these aspects so that more students will get advantage of these conditions and will pursue their studies with intent.All attributes that fall into this quadrant are the strength and pillar of the University; altogether, they should become the pride of the University.Quadrant 3 (Low Priority) has three points which should be remarked.They are: (i) Reputation, (ii) Web Interactivity, and (iii) Feedback Mechanism.This quadrant is an indication that both satisfaction and the degree of its importance are in the low category.The University should classify these aspects as 'the next' focus after concentrating on the critical spots found in Quadrant 1 and Quadrant 2. Therefore, any of the attributes falling into this quadrant is not important and poses no threat.
Finally, in Quadrant 4, five points are classified as Possible Overkill.They are: (i) Administration, (ii) Fee, (iii) Curriculum, (iv) Web Design, and (vi) Relevance of the Program.This quadrant indicates that the Servqual provided is considered much less important but respondents considered them as high in satisfaction.Here, attention to the attributes included can be less focused so that the University can save costs by redirecting them to take up vital spots in Quadrant 1 and maintain fundamental spots in Quadrant 2.
Having positioned variables and dimensions in relation to the appropriate quadrants based on IPA-CSI approach, we are now in the position to relate loading factors of the framework.This is to observe the power of relations between each variable involved in the operational framework as a comprehensive framework under SEM (Wijayanto, 2008;Hair, Black, Babin & Anderson, 2009), to work out the end results (Figure 5).
Open Praxis, vol.7 issue 4, October-December 2015, pp.325-337 1.The first is related to the main five variables which directly influence satisfaction (orderly rank).
Having collected and aggregated outcomes accomplished under qualitative inquiry, there are three major effects, which need to be noticed thoughtfully.The first outcome is related to the conceptual and operational framework of the research (it refers to Figure 1, Figure 2, and Figure 3; including Table 1).The second is on the IPA-CSI chart results (it refers to Figure 4).The third concerns the methodology used (mixed-methods, i.e., explanatory-design).It is understood that the conceptual framework structure quantitatively confirms career advancement as the primary aspect and is then followed by retention, academic performance, and persistence successively.In general, this result is in agreement with the qualitative inquiry.It implies that four factors are also found from in-depth interviews and focus group discussions.In terms of its order, however, the selected respondents express that satisfaction leads to (in different order of ranks than that of quantitative results): (i) Academic Performance, especially for the GPA, (ii) Persistence, especially for re-registering regularly in consecutive semesters, (iii) Retention, especially for study up to finish, and (iv) Career Advancement especially for future career.These are the things that are most preferably beheld by the selected eligible respondents.This, to a certain extent, is comparable to the work of Swail (2004).
In this upshot, it seems that there is a slight discrepancy between quantitative and qualitative outcomes in terms of the positions of the variables involved and their dimensions.This gap lightly exists but it does not create a vivid contradiction that shall drive us to take opposite position further.It rather gives us a wider perspective to be kept in mind for further consideration if we conduct comparable research in the future.
In addition, quantitative outcomes partially put 'access to management' (X 53 =1.00) as the prime attribute in prime variable (X 5 , Responsiveness) that leads to Satisfaction (Y).From the discussions, it was detected that selected respondents prefer to place communication as the top rank in this dot.This is imperative since the students are domiciled overseas and at the same time they are not full-time students.This implies that they have a shortage of time to attend academic activities, such as face to face tutorial or student orientation with regular and fixed schedules (Sawitri & Sembiring, Maximus Gorky Sembiring Open Praxis, vol. 7 issue 4, October-December 2015, pp. 325-337 2013).Students prefer to have other communication arrangements that allow them to access activities, despite not being able to come physically to the specified session.Again, this result does not contradict the other, such that they are totally considered to be opposite to each other in the level of the variable.This even gives us broader angles, as there are many details and aspects that should be taken care of to fulfil various students' need and expectation.
The rest of the quantitative outcomes other than explained above are entirely consistent with the qualitative marks.It implies that from the five dimensions of Servqual only two of them have slightly different ranks from the initial framework; they are only different in terms of the rank.It is the same in the case of the dependent variables, since the difference between what was obtained quantitatively versus qualitatively in the impact of satisfaction was only related to the rank; including ranks in attributes within the variables/dimensions, i.e., career advancement, retention, academic performance, and persistence.
Referring to the second finding from IPA Chart (Figure 4), results from qualitative inquiry are exclusively equivalent with the quantitative ones.To some extent, it implies that they are remarkably the same.It is a pity, however, that the communication system fell in Quadrant 1 (Concentrate Here).All the same, students consider this attribute is critical for most of them, as they are part-time based students; this is in line with Roberts & Styron (2009).Students moreover believe that the communication system in an academic context is extremely important and most of them placed it in the "unsatisfied" level.Additionally, access to management is extremely crucial according to students, it fell in the first quadrant.This entails that the University should put these two attributes as a top priority to be tackled particularly, to suit the needs and expectations of those overseas students.
Support from faculty and tutorial support are also dropped in this quadrant.These two services however are tightly related to academic service.It implies that the two services are crucial according to students and concomitantly they found it unsatisfactory.This vital issue should be taken care of as it will promptly influence student performance in academic sense; it finally affects students' GPA.
Looking up to the third effect, from a methodological perspective, it appears that mixed-methods used in this study are proper.There are slight and minor differences in terms of the end results but they are firmly limited in numbers as well as trivial or low in implications and consequences with respect to the initial conceptual and operational frameworks.Differences in terms of end results took place in the level of ranks, not in the sense of conceptual or even theoretical outlooks.Although they differ, this does not indicate that they are in contradictory dots.To a certain extent, it can be inferred that the differences that emerged were actually in the sense of widening our perspectives, and that they support each other methodologically in practicable intensity (Creswell & Clark, 2011).
From a methodological direction, the outcomes of the study give us durable bases that the mixedmethods with the choice of explanatory-design, is suitable to assess Servqual and its dimensions with respect to their plausible linkages.Quantitatively, it is understandable that IPA-CSI approach is able to display distinctively what are the things that should be placed within the top priority to be controlled prudently (Quadrant 1).The approach is proficient enough to classify which things should be persistently maintained (Quadrant 2), what are the things to be classified as the next priority and pose no threats (Quadrant 3), and what are the things considered to be less important so that there is no need to rush and take them into account by all means (Wong, Hideki & George, 2012).
Correspondingly, IPA Chart effects are reinforced quantitatively by SEM outcomes.Combining these end results will objectively direct the University to formulate alternative courses of action for future needs with respect to student outlooks.It is fortunate that the qualitative inquiry was also in accordance with the previous results implemented under the quantitative approach.It has been a phenomenon that most universities are generally limited by tangible resources, they are referred to Validating student satisfaction related to persistence, academic performance, retention and career advancement within ODL perspectives Open Praxis, vol.7 issue 4, October-December 2015, pp.325-337 5-M (man, money, material, machine, and method).By considering this constraint, it is then just right to formulate "new" ideas on how to effectively re-direct the available resources (5-M) such that there are sufficient efforts and related supports to primarily concentrate dealing with aspects in Quadrant 1 and maintaining aspects in Quadrant 2 (Tileng, Wiranto & Latuperissa, 2013).
In Universitas Terbuka contexts, this result will be incredibly useful to "re-formulate" the things that should be put as a top priority to fulfil students' expectations in conjunction with satisfying needs of those students living overseas.At least eight aspects dropped into Quadrant 1 should be brilliantly controlled with high intent.Additionally, four aspects that drop into Quadrant 2 should also be repeatedly preserved as they are the pillar and the pride of the University.By all means, some aspects from Quadrant 1 can be moved on to Quadrant 2. If this takes place, it will improve the number of students feeling satisfied.The more students are satisfied, the more likely they will persist.Persistence is operationally defined as students doing their registration regularly in each and every semester.It implies that the University is able to maintain the size and growth of the student body as it was initially planned (Archambault, 2008).

Concluding Remarks
The research has created a quantitative framework of student satisfaction and its dimensions with respect to their links, extended from a comprehensive analysis of educational perspective in terms of student's behavior literatures.The framework was validated using SEM, assessing the empirical data from a survey of 169 Universitas Terbuka students living overseas.The study ascertains that satisfaction leads to career advancement, retention, academic performance, and persistence successively.Besides, satisfaction is affected by responsiveness, assurance, tangible, reliability, and empathy, in this order.Under IPA-CSI procedures, eight aspects should be taken into account cautiously (they are: handling complaints, communication, tutorial, access to management, attention, module, support, and student service) from a student standpoint.Methodologically, results under a quantitative approach are consistent with the results from the qualitative series.Although there is a difference, they only slightly differ in ranks of dimensions/attributes; not in theoretical or conceptual levels.It can be inferred that they are empirically supplemented one to another.
Further research is also necessary, including follow-up studies with students who did not enroll each semester successively.It should also explore satisfaction level beyond attributes that were included in the five dimensions explained.The scope should also be broadened beyond students living overseas.By doing so, it would put forward a more comprehensive perspective, especially on persistence, academic performance, retention, and career advancement, since meeting the needs of ODL students will improve at least for both the persistence and retention rates (Sampson, 2003).
It is sincerely hoped that these results will provide opportunities for the University to be more contributive in helping Indonesia government to eradicate restraints for the nations to gain access to higher education as well as improving their qualifications.In a more general sense, if this experience is emblematical of universities worldwide, then universities' management and academy would be well recommended to cogitate student satisfaction as being instruments to prolonged accomplishment and continued existence of their institution.If student persistence and retention can be achieved through excellent Servqual approach, this implies that the University is on the right path to encourage its upright mission of making higher education open to all.This is consistent with the 31 st anniversary tagline of the University, i.e., membangun pagar bangsa (advancing/protecting the nation through flexible quality education).The University will ultimately be poised to achieve the vision of becoming a world quality institution in the provision of graduates with world quality standards (Universitas Terbuka, 2015a).

Figure
Figure 3: t -value of the Framework

Figure 4 :
Figure 4: IPA-CSI Chart of the Framework