Research on the Influencing Factors of K-12 Students’ Engagement in Home-based Online Learning during COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

In the beginning of2020, COVID-19 pandemic emerged in many regions of China, and the spring semester of primary and middle schools was postponed. At the call of "Suspension of Classes but not Learning" by MOE, all educational institutes adopted the online learning methods. However, the home-based online learning lacks teacher supervision, peer support, classroom environment constraints. These intensify students’ attention difficulty when compared -with face-to-face learning in the classroom, which makes students’ learning engagement more important to ensure the learning effect. According to online focus group interviews with the education experts and K-12 teachers respectively, the researchers found out some possible influencing factors to K-12 students’ online learning engagement: perceived teacher involvement, perceived parental involvement, students’ self-discipline, and student emotion. Therefore, this study proposes a prediction model from the above four aspects. By using multivariate linear regression analysis and variance analysis, this study finds: (1) Perceived teacher involvement, perceived parent support, student self-discipline and student emotion all have significant positive effects on online learning engagement. (2) There are significant differences in students’ online learning engagement for different learning stages and different network environments at home Students’ online learning engagement has no significant difference between urban and rural areas.