Investigating the Influence of Interaction on Learning Persistence in Online Settings: Moderation or Mediation of Academic Emotions?

Jianhui Yu,Changqin Huang,Ming Li,Zhongmei Han,Tao He

doi:10.3390/ijerph17072320

Abstract

Learning persistence is a critical element for successful online learning. The evidence provided by psychologists and educators has shown that students’ interaction (student-student (SS) interaction, student-instructor (SI) interaction, and student-content (SC) interaction) significantly affects their learning persistence, which is also related to their academic emotions. However, few studies explore the relations among students’ interaction, academic emotions and learning persistence in online learning environments. Furthermore, no research has focused on multi-dimensional students’ interaction and specific academic emotions. Based on person-environment interaction model and transactional distance theory, this study investigates the relationship between students’ interaction and learning persistence from the perspective of moderation and mediation of academic emotions including enjoyment, boredom, and anxiety. Data were collected from 339 students who had online learning experience in China. AMOS 22.0 (IBM, Armonk, NY, USA) and SPSS 22.0 (IBM, Armonk, NY, USA) were employed to analyze the mediating and moderating effects of academic emotions, respectively. The results revealed that students’ interaction and academic emotions directly related to learning persistence. Specifically, enjoyment, anxiety and boredom had significant mediating and moderating effects on the relationship between students’ interaction and learning persistence. Based on these findings, we further discussed the theoretical and practical implications on how to facilitate students’ learning persistence in online learning environments.

Highlights

As a common way of learning, online learning has attracted lots of scholarly interest
Due to different cross-cultural backgrounds, the items of three instruments were deleted based on the three criteria: (1) all of the item factor loadings should be higher than 0.6; (2) the values of the Composite Reliability (CR) should exceed 0.8; (3) the values of Average Variance Extracted (AVE) should exceed 0.5 [65], with each construct still having at least 3 items
This study provides a new perspective on understanding the mechanisms that underlie the relationship between students’ interaction, academic emotions and learning persistence

Summary

Introduction

As a common way of learning, online learning has attracted lots of scholarly interest. Based on the well-established fact that online learning suffers from a low level of learning persistence, the question arises as to how learning engagement and persistence are facilitated in online learning environments. This is a critical problem that remains unsolved [1]. There still exists a research gap of investigating the mattering factors and driving mechanism promoting students’ learning persistence in online learning environments, which provides theoretical ground and practical reference for facilitating students’ learning persistence in the future. Transactional distance theory, developed from the work of Moore [4], is an applicable theoretical foundation to explain the antecedents and driving mechanism of learning outcomes, because

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