Current Status of College Students' Learning Engagement Level in Online Learning and Strategies to Improve it-Take a University in Western China as an Example

Abstract

The most urgent need of higher education is now to cultivate high-quality talent. The inexhaustible impetus for the connotative and high-quality development of higher education includes whether distance education can improve its quality and efficiency. As an important indicator of the quality of online learning of college students, the level of learning engagement has gradually gained the attention and research of experts and scholars. This study focuses on synchronous online learning in online learning, which can guide teachers to design better online courses. This study analyzes the current situation of the online learning engagement level of college students from a micro perspective, which helps us to understand the role of college students' learning engagement in distance learning to improve the professional development ability of college students and promote the quality of education in higher education institutions. Based on student participation theory and learning engagement theory, this study uses stratified sampling and random sampling to select 142 college students in a university in western China as the research subjects and adopts quantitative analysis as the main method and a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis to explore the online learning engagement of college students in a university in western China. The results showed that the overall online learning commitment of college students in a university in western China was moderate. Specifically, the level of cognitive engagement in the online classroom was moderate, the level of emotional engagement in the online classroom was good, and the level of behavioral engagement in the online classroom was poor. By describing the current situation, we can see that there are some problems in college students' online learning engagement. Based on the theory of learning engagement, specific research data and the results of semi-structured interviews, we propose some suggestions to improve the online learning engagement of college students in a university in western China from three aspects: cognitive engagement, behavioral engagement, and emotional engagement.