Abstract
Positive personal characteristics such as happiness or wellbeing can motivate students to elevate their school performance in higher education. Orientation to happiness is a construct that combines three sources of happiness: pleasure, meaning, and engagement, all of which have been identified as a predictor of university student’s engagement. However, most research in this area has been conducted during ideal situations or face-to-face education, and no cross-country research has been published examining the relationship between these two concepts during the COVID-19 era, where online education was predominant. This study aimed to investigate the relation between orientation to happiness and student engagement after twelve months of distance education in a sample of 1723 students from six American countries, including the USA, Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia, Peru, and the Dominican Republic. Results indicate that university student´s' engagement is influenced by the orientation to happiness. Further implications of these results are discussed.
Highlights
Positive personal characteristics such as happiness or wellbeing can motivate students to elevate their school performance in higher education
Students in the Dominican Republic reported higher levels of orientation to happiness in all three domains and the global measure (M = 3.62 – 3.92; SD = .50 - .73) while students from USA reported the lower mean on the global scale of orientation to happiness (M = 3.35; SD = .49), pleasure (M = 3.34; SD = .66), and engagement (M = 3.09; SD = .60)
Descriptive statistics of students engagement presented a larger range of means (M = 2.81 - 4.28; SD = .54 - .87), two countries exhibited high values of central tendency, El Salvador obtained higher mean on the global scale (M = 4.05; SD = .60), and in emotional engagement (M = 3.98; SD = .75) while the Dominican Republic exhibited higher level of behavioural engagement (M = 4.28; SD = .57), and cognitive engagement (M = 4.13; SD = .65)
Summary
Positive personal characteristics such as happiness or wellbeing can motivate students to elevate their school performance in higher education. Durón-Ramos and colleagues (2020) found that orientation to happiness has a positive relationship to school performance; it is important to determine if this relationship is maintained during the online education students have received during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is important in light of research which suggests that when students have negative perceptions of online learning it diminishes their self-efficacy and motivation. Factors such as computer literacy and teaching methods, which proven to have significant influence on elearning (Mayerova & Rosicka, 2015)
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