Students' Barriers and Emotional Presence in Online Learning: A Canonical Correlation Analysis

Abstract

Addressing the barriers students face in online learning is critical to creating an inclusive, supportive, and practical educational experience that benefits many students. The aim of this study is to examine students' online learning barriers and emotional presence, which affect many variables in online learning environments, and the relationship between these variables. For this purpose, data was collected from 402 university students enrolled in the same course at a university. According to the data collected from the students, it can be said that the student's barriers to online learning are at a medium level for eight sub-factors ((a) administrative issues, (b) social interaction, (c) academic skills, (d) technical skills, (e) learner motivation, (f) time and support for studies, (g) cost and access to the Internet, and (h) technical problems). Similarly, it was found that students' emotional presence in online learning is at an average level for Receiving Emotions (x̄=3,438) and Giving Emotions (x̄=2,994) factors. Canonical correlation analysis was used to show the relationship between student barriers and emotional presence. As a result of this analysis, it was concluded that the canonical correlation was low. It was observed that the factor that contributed the most to the significant model among student barriers was the factor of administrative/instructor issues, and the factor of receiving emotions factor was one of the emotional presence factors.