Exploring Factors, and Indicators for Measuring Students’ Sustainable Engagement in e-Learning

Abstract

The topic of engagement has been attracting increasing amounts of attention in the field of e-learning. Research shows that multifarious benefits occur when students are engaged in their own learning, including increased motivation and achievement. Previous studies have proposed many scales for measuring student engagement. However, very few have been developed to measure engagement in e-learning environments. Thus, developing an instrument for measuring student engagement in e-learning environments is the purpose of this study. The participants of this study were 737 Korean online university students. Initial items were designed based on the literature. The instrument items were reduced from an initial 48 to 24 items after obtaining expert opinion and then validity and reliability analysis. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were also conducted. Six factors, including psychological motivation, peer collaboration, cognitive problem solving, interaction with instructors, community support, and learning management emerged in the 24-item scale. This scale is expected to help instructors and curriculum designers to find conditions to improve student engagement in e-learning environments, and ultimately prevent students from dropping out of online courses.