Examining factors influencing e-learning engagement among university students during covid-19 pandemic: a mediating role of "learning persistence"

The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 made universities switch rapidly to e-learning, which enabled continuous access to education. Thus, the evaluation of e-learning engagement is essential to ensure students are engaged in their studies just as it is in the conventional face-to-face classroom. The students are totally in control of their participation in the e-learning platform, and little is known about what instructors can do to facilitate their engagement in the platform during the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, the extant literature has reported that one of the challenges posed by e-learning is that many university students engage in off-task behaviors during lectures. Therefore, a systematic model for assessing university students' e-learning engagement, learning persistence, and academic benefits was developed based on a thorough literature review. Data was collected from 274 students using e-learning platforms, and this study adopted the quantitative method of Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling to validate the model empirically. A total of nine first-order constructs were used to measure e-learning engagement. They all explained 75% of the variance of e-learning engagement, while 42% and 66% explained the variance of learning persistence and academic benefits, respectively. All the hypotheses tested were positive, except for the relationship between learning persistence and academic benefits.