The problem of identifying cognitive and emotional factors of academic success in an online course

Abstract

We studied the psychological factors associated with the efficiency of online learning by using a sample of students from a Russian university (Ural Federal University). We used as a point of departure the idea of adaptive learning, which assumes that academic success in an online course is associated with the characteristics of cognitive, emotional, volitional and other areas of a student’s personality. The resulting general linear model includes such factors as internal motivation, external motivation, intelligence, personal qualities, training experience and openness to experience, which have an extremely low proportion of explained variance — 3 %. Based on the above research, the key conclusion was made that a successful student is successful in any training format. In other words, the focus of search for improving the efficiency of online learning should be not only on the psychological characteristics of those students who are successful in the online format, but also on improving the pedagogical design of the online course.