A Systematic Review: criteria and dimensions of learning experience

Abstract

There has been an increased interest in evaluating students’ learning experiences in various academic domains. Some authors consider it an important aspect of education to assess the effectiveness of instructional methods, while others aim to enhance the quality of teaching and learning. Various perspectives can be highlighted, as many articles refer to the learning experience and its evaluation differently. However, few studies provide an explicit dimension to characterize it. Therefore, this study investigates how the learning experience is described in scientific literature, and what criteria are used to characterise learners’ learning experiences. This work aims to answer the following questions: Are there any theories used to examine the learning experience? What are the principal dimensions of a learning experience? How did the studies evaluate the learning experience? This literature review aims to provide an overview of research related to the learning experience and its evaluation. The study includes journal articles published in ScienceDirect, Springer, Wiley, IEEE Xplore Digital Library, and Google Scholar from January 2012 to November 2022. The PRISMA method was used to conduct a systematic review for this work. After identifying, screening, and synthesising relevant literature (Moher et al., 2009), 68 articles were selected, of which 20 will be addressed in this research stage. The selected studies employ various methods to evaluate the learning experience, including questionnaires, surveys, and scales, and they are conducted in various educational contexts, such as medical education, biology, language teaching, etc. The review analysis shows three principal dimensions of learning experience: the learner's perception of the learning environment, their attitudes and behavior in learning, and the learning activities. The study’s findings also highlighted that “learning experience” is used as a broad concept to describe specific teaching and learning scenarios or activities. Furthermore, few references from educational sciences have been identified to characterise it. This article delineates the dimensions characterising the learning experience, which helps develop and design new teaching and learning solutions.