Driving Success in e-Learning Portals: Piazza, a Multi-Faculty Collaborative Model

Technological advancements are triggering disruptive inventions in the teaching and learning process. The introduction of massive online courses offers students many opportunities to enroll in any course they choose, transcending geographical barriers. However, online learning puts responsibility for learning on the learners and lack faculty-student and peer-peer direct interactions. The instructor's role also must be redefined to provide support and collaboration in the online environment. Recent research reports poor student retention and completion rates in such courses and there is a lack of effective frameworks and gap in research related to identifying key factors and finding solutions to these problems. A multi-faculty e-learning framework is proposed based on a theoretical model highlighting important factors to address these problems. Experimental results of an ANOVA analysis done on student performance data collected in a multi-faculty setup provided empirical evidence for its effectiveness in improving the student learning outcomes.