Exploring Online Environment: The Case For Social Cognitive Theory

Abstract

Online learning is now at the forefront of the educational landscape because of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, which calls for the quick adoption and integration of innovative technology-learning strategies that promote continuous learning. Hence, this quantitative study sought to increase student engagement in an online learning environment by examining how the environment, behavior, and cognition affect how well students perceive their learning experiences. A total of 255 respondents from public universities in Malaysia were gathered using a questionnaire that was adapted from a previous study by Martin & Bolliger (2018). There are four sections with related questions to measure the three types of interaction in online learning. In general, the results revealed that the learner-to-instructor and the learner-to-content interaction are considered significant elements that may make or break the online learning environment. The study's results may be used as a guide for educators and learners to enhance the present and future performance in the online learning environment.

Language Teacher’s Experience and Preference toward Online Learning Platforms during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…This demonstrates that Ethiopian language teachers' preferences improved following the outbreak of COVID-19 in the 2020 academic calendar [55,68]. The study's findings are consistent with previous research, which focused on teachers' preferences for OLPs before and after the COVID-19 pandemic [26,35,51,61,69]. According to Basheti et al [9], even though they experienced a moderate level of difficulty (2.60-3.39), there may have been some difficulties experienced with the OLPs during the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

“…According to Mishra et al [35], the effects of workload, a lack of digital competency, and a lack of knowledge of digital pedagogy on staff stress are all being studied. Although there has not been much research on online education in emergency situations, as most studies have focused on distance learning [36,37,[45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53], the current pandemic has demonstrated that educational settings must take a proactive approach to ensure that their students receive the best education possible.…”

“…Although the experience and preferences of students and teachers toward OLPs have received increased attention in recent years, its ecological context continues to be critiqued. Previous studies [e.g., 1,22,36,37,[45][46][47][48][49][50][51] have explored students' and teachers' uses of OLPs from around the world, both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic [52][53][54][55][56]. For instance, Al Shammari [36,37] studied the experiences of devices and preferences of OLPs of English major college students in Saudi Arabia and found that laptops were their most used device and Zoom was the most preferred platform.…”

“…However, due to the lack of ecological validity in previous studies, the findings may not be applicable to the context of this study. Online learning is now at the forefront of the educational landscape due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which calls upon everyone in the educational field to use innovative OLPs to promote continuous learning [51,53]. Hence, as the context of this study is in developing countries with language teachers who are not well familiar with innovative technologies, this study seeks to increase language teacher engagement in OLPs by exploring how well language teachers perceive their experience and preferences toward OLPs in an ecological context.…”

Exploring Factors for Learning Through Social Cognitive Theory

“…However, lack researchers investigate the extent to which the factors of language learning into actual behavior of the learners have and if one is more influential than another. Sokman et al (2022) stated that the learner-to-instructor and the learner-to-content interaction are considered significant elements that may make or break the learning environment.…”