Effectiveness of Autonomous Learning Materials for Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study of the Daxie Second Elementary School in Ningbo, Zhejiang, China

Abstract

Autonomous learning materials play a vital role in developing students’ autonomy. By providing students with appropriate autonomous learning materials to meet their self-diagnosis learning needs, this can effectively improve students’ academic performance. During the COVID-19 pandemic, students’ learning changed from offline to online. However, in this process, how should teachers and students choose in the face of the rich autonomous learning materials online? This study took students from two elementary schools in Ningbo of Zhejiang Province as the research objects to determine whether autonomous learning materials are conducive to students’ autonomous learning. Further, under the same background, answered whether different autonomous learning materials have different effects on student performance. We selected a total of 449 students in the second and fifth grades of the two elementary schools, and after excluding extreme values, 229 were enrolled in the experimental group and 220 were in the control group. The study found that (i) under the influence of COVID-19, the use of autonomous learning materials was effective for most disciplines; (ii) compared with audio and video learning materials, protocol-guided learning materials improved students’ academic performance much higher. Based on this, we suggest that in the teaching process, teachers should select and use autonomous learning materials in a targeted manner to achieve the purpose of promoting learning.​