Students’ Use of E-learning During the Coronavirus Pandemic

The breakout of the coronavirus disease has brought about a seismic shift in the daily lives of people worldwide. Educational institutions have been temporarily closed and different types of lockdowns and social distancing approaches have been applied in countries around the world to delay the spread of the disease. This study investigates the determinants influencing university student intentions and use of electronic learning during the pandemic. Data were collected online from 229 respondents in different academic disciplines at various Saudi Arabia universities. The findings revealed that two factors positively affected students’ behavioral intention to utilize electronic learning: trust and performance expectancy. Moreover, the findings showed the significance of facilitating conditions and behavioral intention on students’ use of electronic learning during the lockdown. The study findings provide some important practical insights on how curriculum and pedagogy should be modified by adjusting learning standards and assessment tools.

Development of L2 listening metacognitive awareness via online metacognitive listening practice

Metacognitive intervention of listening has prevailed in L2 (Second Language) listening research in the past decade. However, rare research has linked metacognitive intervention with online listening. This study examines L2 learners’ development of metacognitive awareness of listening through online metacognitive listening practice. A set of online metacognitive listening exercises were constructed, based on a metacognitive cycle that regularly guides learners through metacognitive processes of listening. Thirty-nine low-proficiency Chinese university EFL listeners from one intact class participated in the study and did online listening practice as individual outside-class homework for 14 weeks. The development of metacognitive awareness was measured by MALQ and enriched by the learners' reflective notes. Results reveal an inverted U-shape pattern in the development of metacognitive awareness and that the factors of metacognitive awareness develop asynchronously. Some factors appear more susceptible to listening task difficulty and more unstable in the development process.

Monitoring Student Performance Through an Agile Project Based Assessment Strategy for Distance Higher Education

This article presents an observational qualitative study regarding the use of agile methodologies in implementing project-based student assessment procedures in higher education courses. The study comprised 32 students enrolled in an online Biology class in a public university in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Students underwent two types of activities: first using traditional project-based learning; second using an agile approach based on the EduScum methodology. Results demonstrated that the agile methodology enforced student engagement, especially collaboration aspects. Interactions between students and teachers became more acute and straightforward. Moreover, it became easier for teachers to monitor students' performance throughout the course. This, this study provides highlights to enable schools to improve students' assessment procedures in distance education courses

The three-iterative design and implementation of a student-facing social learning analytics tool

The design of social learning analytics (SLA) tools has become a practical means to make available learning information with a goal to improve students’ regulation, reflection, and engagement in online learning. This design-based research uses the multi-method analytics to iteratively design, implement, and modify the SLA tool that makes available social, topic, and cognitive information to students in online discussions. This tool demonstrates students’ online discussions from social, sematic, and cognitive aspects. This research further uses online questionnaire and interview methods to investigate students’ perceptions about the tool’s usefulness and usability. After experiencing this tool, students proposed critical feedback for tool improvement from the network visualization, peer reference, and explanation support perspectives. Overall, the SLA tool is a beneficial tool to foster students’ awareness of their own learning and peer learning process, to improve students’ regulation and reflection of learning, and eventually improve student engagement in online discussions.

The determinants of student attitude toward e-learning academic achievement during the COVID-19 pandemic

Many educational institutions have adopted e-learning methods during the COVID-19 pandemic to maintain school teaching activities. However, systematic research on e-learning effectiveness in such a crisis is quite insufficient. This study aims to explore the impact of e-learning quality on students’ satisfaction during the pandemic in regard to academic achievement and behavioral intention. Through a questionnaire and semester score database, the relevant data of 683 students were collected and then analyzed by PLS-SEM. The result shows that instructor teaching quality and e-learning system quality influence students’ academic achievement and behavioral intention through increasing students’ e-learning satisfaction. E-learning system quality moderated the impact of instructor teaching quality on students’ e-learning satisfaction. The findings of this study provide valuable insights into the comprehensive implementation of e-learning during a crisis.

Engaging Pre-Service Teachers in Virtual Field Experience During COVID-19

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, universities have moved rapidly to transition of various courses and programs from face-to-face to online delivery mode. Involving pre-service teachers in the virtual field experience remained almost impossible. In the United Arab Emirates, however, a small cohort of four pre-service teachers have completed their teaching practicum online for the first time. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the effectiveness of virtual practicum placement and its impact on developing preservice teachers' teaching practices, classroom management skills, and the use of online resources. A qualitative approach was employed for data collection including open-ended interviews, journal entries, and written reflections under guided reflective categories to uncover participants' perceptions about their virtual teaching experience. Findings revealed the significant role of the mentor and suggested a framework for effective virtual field experience.

A Framework for Large-Scale Automatic Fluency Assessment

Learning assessments are important to monitor the progress of students throughout the teaching process. In the digital era, many local and large-scale learning assessments are conducted through technological tools. In this view, a large-scale learning assessment can be designed to tackle one or multiple parts of the teaching process. Oral reading fluency assessments evaluate the ability to read reference texts. However, even though the use of applications to collect the reading of the students avoids logistics costs and speeds up the process, the evaluation of recordings has become a challenging task. Therefore, this work presents a computational solution for large-scale precision-critical fluency assessment. The goal is to build an approach based on automatic speech recognition (ASR) for the automatic evaluation of the oral reading fluency of children and reduce hiring costs as much as possible.

Exploring the Relationship Between MOOC Resource Management and Students' Perceived Benefits and Satisfaction via SEM

Student satisfaction has become a crucial measure in massive open online course (MOOC) learning experience. Students with high satisfaction not only bring the long-term benefits to higher education, but also help to sustain MOOCs as a source of revenue. Thus, this study is aimed to examine the contributing factors of sustainability implementation model of MOOCs from the students' perceptions. A total of 763 undergraduate students in Malaysia participated MOOCs in this study. The proposed research model was evaluated via survey analysis and followed by the structural equation modelling analysis. The findings indicated that pedagogy and enrolment of MOOC are significant antecedents to predict students' perceived benefits and satisfaction. Moreover, students' perceived benefit is a vital mediator to their satisfaction on MOOC implementation. The implications of this study on MOOC implementation and its sustainability in higher education institutions are also discussed.

Students' Perceived Difficulty and Satisfaction in Face-to-Face vs. Online Sections of a Technology-Intensive Course

One of the major concerns about online learning has been the low level of student satisfaction and retention rates. Using the community of inquiry (CoI) framework, this study examined course delivery modes and students' perceived ratings of course difficulty in online and face-to-face sections of a technology-intensive course and how the delivery modes and perceived difficulty were related to the essential elements of the CoI framework and course satisfaction. The findings revealed that more students in the online section found it difficult to learn in a technology-intensive course. Also, while different delivery modes were closely related to social presence, students' perceived course difficulty was significantly related to teaching and cognitive presences of the CoI framework. Additionally, there was a correlation between students' perceived difficulty ratings and student satisfaction in online learning.

A Meta-Analysis of Online Learning Outcomes and Their Gender Differences

In this COVID-19 pandemic, learners across the world are encouraged to stay at home receiving online education, which has nearly caused various learning outcomes. It is thus necessary to analyze online learning outcomes, as well as their gender differences to provide constructive references for learners, teachers, and technology developers. This study obtained reliable data from various databases using searching techniques. The study also selected the research articles based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. After analyzing the forest and funnel plots drawn via Review Manager 5.3, the study arrived at the conclusion that online learning outcomes were significantly higher than the traditional learning outcomes with a large effect size (d = 1.24), while the gender differences in learning outcomes were not significant with a small effect size (d = -0.03). In the future, experts could make every effort to develop advanced emotion detection applications via interdisciplinary cooperation to improve online learning outcomes.