Digital literacy and online learning satisfaction among junior high school students in the context of COVID-19: The mediating role of online learning engagement and the moderating role of parents' educational expectations

Abstract

Abstract During the COVID-19 lockdown period, educational institutions in many countries adopted online teaching methods to varying degrees to cope with the impact of the epidemic on education, and online learning satisfaction was an important indicator to measure the effect of online learning. This study aimed to explore the mechanism among digital literacy, online learning satisfaction, online learning engagement, and parents' educational expectations. The Digital Literacy Scale, Online Learning Engagement Scale, Perceived Parental Expectation (PPE) Scale, and Satisfaction with the Online Learning Scale were adopted to measure 916 Chinese junior school students. The results were: (1) The digital literacy of junior high school students had a positive correlation with their online learning satisfaction. (2) Online learning engagement mediated the relationship between digital literacy and online learning satisfaction. (3) The positive effect of digital literacy on online learning engagement was different among middle school students who perceived different levels of parental educational expectations; that is, parental educational expectations moderated the first half of the mediating effect. The relationship between digital literacy and online learning satisfaction was a moderated mediated model. More measures should be taken to improve the digital literacy of middle school students and promote the quality of online learning.