Using the Course Experience Questionnaire to Assess UAE Students’ Perceptions of their Learning Environment

Abstract

The quality of the learning environment has a significant impact on students’ ability to achieve their learning goals. Therefore, this paper aims to examine students’ perceptions of their learning environment in an Arab learning context. The Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ), as an international benchmark, was used with a random sample of students at a public university in the United Arab Emirates. Participants were 623 students (505 females and 118 males) aged between 20 and 28 years. They were asked to complete the CEQ during their professional development seminars immediately before graduation. The results show strong reliability for the CEQ (Cronbach’s alpha = .90). The students had positive perceptions on the six CEQ subscales, with Good Teaching scoring the highest and Appropriate Workload the lowest. The findings support the use of the CEQ as a benchmark of teaching effectiveness outside the Western World. Despite the widespread use of the CEQ around the world, it is not commonly used in the Arab learning context. Therefore, this paper makes a valuable contribution towards further validating the CEQ as a benchmark of quality in higher education in the Arab world.