The relationships of motivation and self-regulation to students’ cognitive presence and empowerment in online learning environment

This study extends the community of inquiry (CoI) framework and empowerment theory by exploring the relationships between motivational variables, CoI variables, learning presence, and empowerment. We added motivational beliefs (growth mindset, self-efficacy, and task value) as associated variables and learning presence (online self-regulation) as a mediator and examined their contribution to students’ cognitive presence and empowerment. The participants were 539 junior middle-school students in rural China who had acquired significant online learning experience as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results showed that motivational variables were associated with students’ social presence and online self-regulation, which in turn related to their cognitive presence and empowerment in the online learning environment. Growth mindset and self-efficacy also exhibited a significant correlation with students’ cognitive presence. There was a positive correlation between cognitive presence and empowerment. We also found teaching presence has a positive association with social presence but a negative association with online self-regulation. Our research provides a more comprehensive explanatory model of online instruction and student empowerment by introducing the elements of motivational beliefs and learning presence to the CoI framework.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are indebted to the participating students.

Funding

This work was supported by the Chinese National Social Sciences Fund (Education) for Young Scholars: Students’ Self-regulated Learning and Support from Teachers and Parents in the Digital Era [Project number: CCA210257], Collaborative Innovation Center for Informatization and Balanced Development of K-12 Education by MOE, Grant/Award Number: xtzd2022-002; National Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant/Award Number: 62107020.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

1. Faculty of Artificial Intelligence in Education, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei, China Yuqin Yang
2. Department of Mathematics and Information Technology, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR, Hong Kong Zhizi Zheng & Daner Sun
3. College of Education, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China Jing Wang

1. Yuqin Yang