A Study of Students’ Perceptions of Course Management Systems in Hospitality Programs: A Case of Blackboard System in the United States

The present study aims to investigate the importance of informational elements used in course management systems (CMS) and to identify tailored applications of CMS in hospitality education programs. As a type of CMS, Blackboard was selected for this study because of its popularity in the United States. In addition, importance-performance analysis was used to identify respondents’ perceptual mapping in terms of informational elements in CMS. The findings show significant gaps between importance and performance measures for the informational elements of CMS. With regard to the importance-performance analysis, the primary results reveal that respondents perceived test-related elements (e.g., assignment scores, exam/test scores, quiz scores, extra points) as high in performance and importance. This study helps hospitality educators better understand students’ perceptions of the system’s functionality so that they can provide more tailored e-class content for the efficiency of the system.