Exploring the Relationship Between Student Engagement and Authentic Learning During COVID-19: Moderating Role of Lack of Attention via WeChat

1. Introduction

The recent influence of the digitized technologies has become significant tool to improve the educational field such as the support of the digital system itself that interlinks the school network, facilitates information access as well as encourages social interaction among students through online platform. Indeed, several researches have studied the influence of social interaction via online channel in regards to academic perspectives. Uijl et al. (2017) study social interaction in small private online courses and find that social interaction is critical to create students’ attachment to their peers in terms of offering assistance among them such as discussing, and explaining content which the percentage of students achieving same courses is equal to campus versions. Zhang et al. (2017) examine whether social interaction enhances learning outcome when joining massive open online courses and discover that most students earn better social engagement, better quiz achievement levels as well as better course scores. The study by Doolan and Gilbert (2017) upon the blending use of internet-based technology platforms such as Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook, Dropbox etc. from the handheld devices such as smartphones and laptops by students in UK to reinforce their learning through social interactions and participation beyond university managed learning environment (MLE). Bano et al. (2017) find that social integration considerably influences the bonding social capital's mediating role between WhatsApp use and psychological well-being of students. The study by Chen et al. (2018) highlights that it is essential for social learning analytics tool which is used to support students’ social interaction to offer simplicity in order to encourage student engagement during online discussion. Shelton et al. (2017) study the means of social interaction of students and find that the higher engagement level contributes to the more success of students in online courses. However, student engagement and authentic learning during the market turbulence such as COVID-19 have not been discovered so far.

Student engagement represents the activities that students participate within the community of their academic institution (Peters et al., 2018) which requires investment of their time and effort (Kuh, 2009). Hence, student engagement is related to students’ feeling inclusive and appealed to their studying and the familiarity with their classes and their institutions (Axelson and Flick, 2010). Indeed, student engagement does not only focus on individuals, it also describes the tie in social context (Jonasson, 2012; Kahu, 2013). Alioon and Delialioğlu (2017) find that m-learning is efficient tool to encourage student engagement and that students perceive mobile phone as a device for authentic cooperative m-learning activities that is suitable for cooperation and communication improvement. While Kahn et al. (2017) study post graduate student engagement on completely online method and find that their engagement hangs upon the reflexivity focus of the shared goals in aggregate reflexivity. According to the study by Peters et al. (2018) which highlights twelve tips to enhance student engagement based on best practice from renowned universities and find that their peers and faculty plays part in one of the key dominant factors to foster communication panel among students.