The Correlation Between Students’ Attitudes and Persistence in E-Learning

Abstract

Background: For a long time, “attitude" was considered an effective factor in student-teacher interaction and students' progress in traditional education. Recently, it is studied as a motivational factor in learners' engagement in distance and e-learning education. Objectives: This study tried to find out the correlation between “attitude" and “persistence" in e-learning education. Methods: To explore the probable correlation between students' attitudes and their persistence in e-learning systems a survey was conducted to seek students' attitudes toward online course, online interaction, and some of e-communication tools, namely online chat, discussion forum, and e-mail. A sample of 744 students was obtained from 5,285 e-learning undergraduate students who were formally accepted to study in online courses at three Iranian universities from 2014 to 2017. The instruments were two researcher made questionnaires for persistent and non-persistent students in e-learning systems. Results: Findings showed a positive, direct, and significant relationship between students' persistence and their attitudes toward online course (r = 0.744; P = 0.014) and online interaction (r = 0.863; P = 0.001) in e-learning. Also, there was a relationship between students' attitudes toward online interaction with the frequency of student-professor interaction (r = 0.943, P < 0.001) and the frequency of student-student interaction (r = 0.793, P = 0.006). Conclusions: The observed positive and significant relationship between students' attitudes toward online interaction and persistence showed that students' persistence can be increased through enhancing student-professor and student-student interactions in e-learning systems.