Abstract
University students, who are assumed to be digital natives, are exposed to campus e-learning environments to improve their academic performance at the beginning of their academic careers. However, previous studies of students’ perceptions of e-learning demonstrate a lack of consistent results with respect to the prediction of their academic achievement. The goal of this study was to examine university students’ perceptions of e-learning, based on their experiences, and the mediating roles of academic engagement and digital readiness within the university context of an e-learning environment for academic achievement. A total of 614 undergraduate students enrolled in a Korean university participated in this study. Using a partial least squares model to develop the theory, we examined students engaging in university e-learning environments in relation to their perceptions of e-learning, digital readiness, academic engagement, and academic achievement (i.e., grade point average). The results are significant for the importance of students’ academic engagement and digital readiness as mediators in their perceptions of e-learning predicted by academic achievement. Although students positively perceived e-learning experiences on campus, they must have strong digital skills to perform academic work and commit to effortful involvement in the context of academic learning in university e-learning environments. Our results provide practical implications for ways to enhance effective adoption of e-learning environments by college students, educators, and administrators.
Highlights
In recent years, higher education institutions have shown a persistent concern with enhancing students’ academic performance through the use of innovative technologies that offer new ways of delivering and producing university education (Deng & Tavares, 2013; Orton-Johnson, 2009)
Universities are investing in the development of campus e-learning environments as students’ preferred method delivery or as a supplementary method to traditional faceto-face courses, based on the approach that technologically savvy, digital native students are familiar with such learning environments (Parkes, Stein, & Reading, 2015)
The results show that academic engagement (β = 0.297, p < 0.001, supporting Hypothesis 2 (H2)) had significant influence on academic achievement, whereas e-learning adoption (β = 0.067, p > 0.05, not supporting Hypothesis 1 (H1)) and e-learning attitude (β = − 0.052, p > 0.05, not supporting Hypothesis 3 (H3)) did not predict academic achievement
Summary
Higher education institutions have shown a persistent concern with enhancing students’ academic performance through the use of innovative technologies that offer new ways of delivering and producing university education (Deng & Tavares, 2013; Orton-Johnson, 2009). From simple adoption of in-person technology instruction to complex adoption using lecture capture, online chat, discussion boards, and social networking services, the higher education sector adopts blended learning as the norm to improve the effects of using e-learning environments as more active approaches to drive student engagement (López-Pérez, Pérez-López, & Rodríguez-Ariza, 2011) These types of dynamic adoption of e-learning systems show mixed results for students’ academic success such as increased satisfaction with the learning experience (Lyons & Evans, 2013), a positive effect in reducing dropout rates (López-Pérez et al, 2011), higher academic performance (López-Pérez et al, 2011; Roffe, 2002), and reflective and critical thinking (Saadé et al, 2012). We developed the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 8 (H8): Students’ digital readiness for academic engagement is positively related to academic engagement
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