The impact of virtual reality on student engagement in the classroom-a critical review of the literature

Objective

The purpose of this review is to identify the impact of virtual reality (VR) technology on student engagement, specifically cognitive engagement, behavioral engagement, and affective engagement.

Methods

A comprehensive search of databases such as Google, Scopus, and Elsevier was conducted to identify English-language articles related to VR and classroom engagement for the period from 2014 to 2023. After systematic screening, 33 articles were finally reviewed.

Results

The use of VR in the classroom is expected to improve student engagement and learning outcomes, and is particularly effective for students with learning disabilities. However, introducing VR into middle school education poses several challenges, including difficulties in the education system to keep up with VR developments, increased demands on students' digital literacy, and insufficient proficiency of teachers in using VR.

Conclusion

To effectively utilize VR to increase student engagement, we advocate for educational policymakers to provide training and technical support to teachers to ensure that they can fully master and integrate VR to increase student engagement and instructional effectiveness.

An Experimental Platform for Real-Time Students Engagement Measurements from Video in STEM Classrooms

The ability to measure students' engagement in an educational setting may facilitate timely intervention in both the learning and the teaching process in a variety of classroom settings. In this paper, a real-time automatic student engagement measure is proposed through investigating two of the main components of engagement: the behavioral engagement and the emotional engagement. A biometric sensor network (BSN) consisting of web cameras, a wall-mounted camera and a high-performance computing machine was designed to capture students' head poses, eye gaze, body movements, and facial emotions. These low-level features are used to train an AI-based model to estimate the behavioral and emotional engagement in the class environment. A set of experiments was conducted to compare the proposed technology with the state-of-the-art frameworks. The proposed framework shows better accuracy in estimating both behavioral and emotional engagement. In addition, it offers superior flexibility to work in any educational environment. Further, this approach allows a quantitative comparison of teaching methods.

What I know, what I want to know, what I learned: Activating EFL college students' cognitive, behavioral, and emotional engagement through structured feedback in an online environment

Given the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, online classes have received special attention worldwide. Since teachers have a lasting effect on the students, the teacher-student relationship is a pivotal factor in language learning classes. Students will not be engaged in class activities if they are not sufficiently challenged by them or if they do not find them interesting, especially in online classes. From this point of view, motivating, engaging, and testing techniques in online classes are highly important. The present study attempts to demonstrate a correlation between structured feedback and three types of engagement in an online class: cognitive, behavioral, and emotional engagement. The structured feedback, which is used at the end of each lesson lets the students express what they know, what they want to know, and what they learned. The sample of the study consists of 114 EFL third-year college students. The study's findings reveal positive and significant correlations between the three types of engagement; cognitive, behavioral, and emotional, and the use of structured feedback in online classes. In a nutshell, some academic implications and recommendations are provided.

Exploring the effect of use contexts on user engagement toward tourism short video platforms

With tourism short video platforms' increasingly fierce competition, retaining existing users and improving engagement has taken on greater theoretical and practical significance. Based on the self-system model of motivational development, this study, involving an empirical analysis of 252 user data samples, establishes a research model to determine how the use contexts affect users' psychological process and finally lead to behavioral engagement. In particular, four use contexts of tourism short video platforms are proposed-namely, information acquisition, leisure and entertainment, attention obtainment, and social interaction. Different use contexts differ in the degree to which they satisfy users' three psychological needs, thus influence their attitudinal engagement and behavioral engagement. The research results can provide theoretical and practical references on how to improve user engagement toward tourism short video platforms.

Creating behavioral engagement among higher education's prospective students through social media marketing activities: The role of brand equity as mediator

In today's competitive environment, higher education needs to find an effective way to convey its brand to prospective students. Given that the "digital native" (Gen Z) is becoming college aged, social media marketing has become an essential approach to engage with them. However, blasting out recruiting content on its social feeds just isn't working. By developing the higher education adjusted SMMA, structural equation modeling was adopted to figure out its effects on higher education brand equity and prospective student behavioral engagement, quantitatively. 356 3rd grade high school students in Indonesia were employed to assess the structural model. According to the findings of this study, SMMA has a considerable influence on brand equity and behavioral engagement, and brand equity has a noteworthy effect on behavioral engagement. Moreover, brand equity was found as a statistically meaningful mediator in the relationship between SMMA and behavioral engagement. The outcome advised the higher education need to organize its social in fun and interactive ways by leveraging higher education's SMMA as a pillar or benchmark on arranging social media posts and content. Yet, the content and posts should still need prioritize institution awareness and the good image of a higher education. The theoretical and managerial implication were discussed further.

Student's Learning Strategies and Academic Emotions: Their Influence on Learning Satisfaction During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background: Based on the control-value theory (CVT), learning strategies and academic emotions are closely related to learning achievement, and have been considered as important factors influencing student's learning satisfaction and learning performance in the online learning context. However, only a few studies have focused on the influence of learning strategies on academic emotions and the interaction of learning strategies with behavioral engagement and social interaction on learning satisfaction. Methods: The participants were 363 pre-service teachers in China, and we used structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze the mediating and moderating effects of the data. Results: The main findings of the current study showed that learning strategies influence students' online learning satisfaction through academic emotions. The interaction between learning strategies and behavioral engagement was also an important factor influencing online learning satisfaction. Conclusions: We explored the internal mechanism and boundary conditions of how learning strategies influenced learning satisfaction to provide intellectual guarantee and theoretical support for the online teaching design and online learning platform. This study provides theoretical contributions to the CVT and practical value for massive open online courses (MOOCs), flipped classrooms and blended learning in the future.

Interactions between emotional and cognitive engagement with science on YouTube

This study aimed to map and characterize public engagement with science on YouTube. A two-part study was conducted. First, we collected and quantitatively analyzed trending videos on YouTube to evaluate the magnitude of public interaction with science content. Then, we assessed actual, rather than self-reports of, media interactions with science-related YouTube trending videos. We tested associations between behavioral engagement of viewing, liking, disliking or commenting, and emotional and cognitive engagement. Our findings affirm that science content attracts high public interest and that emotional and cognitive engagement with science on social media are distinct, but interrelated. We show that regardless of the valence of emotional engagement, emotion is linked to greater behavioral engagement of posting comments and to greater cognitive engagement of argumentative deliberation. Therefore, our findings suggest that social media interactions, which tend to evoke emotional responses, are a promising means of advancing person-to-person engagement with science.

Do Observed Teaching Behaviors Relate to Students' Engagement in Physical Education?

Teachers' behaviors can affect students' engagement in the Physical Education (PE) setting. According to self-determination theory, teachers can rely on either a need-supportive or a controlling teaching behavior, and these behaviors will differently affect students' outcomes. The main objective of this research was to analyse how teaching behaviors and some contextual variables influence students' engagement in PE classes. The present study adds to the existing literature through an observation-based design in which real-life examples of need-supportive and thwarting teaching behaviors, as well as students' engagement behaviors, have been identified. Thirty-seven different PE lessons were coded for 5-min intervals to assess the occurrence of 36 teaching behaviors and five students' behaviors. Stepwise regression revealed that both structure during activity and relatedness support could predict student engagement in a positive way. Surprisingly, cold teaching also emerged as a direct predictor in the last step of the analysis. On the other hand, controlling and structure before activity behaviors inversely predicted students' engagement. These four variables explained 39% of the variance in student engagement, whereas autonomy support did not correlate with student engagement. These new findings in the field not only confirm the known relevance of teaching behavior for students' outcomes but also suggest an unexpected lack of influence of autonomy support on students' engagement as well as an association between cold teaching and students' engagement. Results are discussed in the light of new approaches, and some practical implications are provided.

Internalization of Mastery Goals: The Differential Effect of Teachers' Autonomy Support and Control

Two linked studies explored whether students’ perceptions differentiate between teachers’ autonomy support and control when presenting mastery goals, and the outcomes of these two practices, in terms of students’ internalization of mastery goals and their behavioral engagement. In two phases, Study 1 (N = 317) sought to validate a new instrument assessing students’ perceptions of teachers’ autonomy support and control when presenting mastery goals. Study 2 (N = 1,331) demonstrated that at both within- and between-classroom levels, perceptions of teachers’ autonomy support for mastery goals were related to students’ mastery goals’ endorsement and behavioral engagement. These relations were mediated by students’ autonomous reasons to pursue learning activities. Perceptions of teachers’ control predicted disengagement through controlled reasons for learning, but only at the within-classroom level. This research joins a growing body of work demonstrating that combining achievement goal theory with SDT can further our understanding of the underpinnings of achievement motivation. It suggests that if teachers want their students to endorse mastery goals (and be more engaged), they need to use more autonomy supportive practices and less controlling ones.

Impact of patient portal behavioral engagement on subsistence consumers' wellbeing☆

Subsistence consumers, representing almost half the global population, live on low incomes, possess low levels of literacy, and generally experience poor health. Technology is a tool used to facilitate stronger connections between consumers and support services, including for subsistence consumers. Given the unique characterization of subsistence marketplaces, research needs to examine potential associations between subsistence consumers' individual resource integration and wellbeing via their behavioral engagement with technologies. Research is also warranted that investigates the factors that can moderate this association. A 45-day customized patient portal app was delivered via 26 healthcare service providers, resulting in the surveying of 336 subsistence consumers who used the portal. The results indicate positive associations between subsistence consumers' individual resource integration, patient portal behavioral engagement, and wellbeing. They also indicate that these associations are strengthened by service provider's resource support and subjective norms, and weakened by medical mistrust. Theoretical and managerial implications from this study's findings are discussed.

•

Fills key research gaps via a patient portal field study of subsistence consumers.

•

Individual resource integration acts as an antecedent to behavioral engagement.

•

Behavioral engagement positively impacts on subsistence consumers' wellbeing.

•

Provider resource support, subjective norms, and medical mistrust act as moderators.

•

Informs practitioners about engagement-led technologies in a subsistence context.

First-Year Students Background and Academic Achievement: The Mediating Role of Student Engagement

The current study aimed to analyze the relationships between students’ background variables (students’ academic preparation and sociocultural status), students’ cognitive and behavioral engagement, and an outcome variable (academic achievement). One sample of 380 first-year students who were studying in different scientific areas participated in the study. Students answered a questionnaire at the beginning and at the end of their first semester in college. To increase ecological validity, students’ cognitive and behavioral engagement and academic achievement were assessed using a specific curricular subject of the course as a reference. Students’ grades were collected through academic services. Data from both time points were analyzed with a structural equation model (SEM), and data showed a goodness of fit of SEM in both time points. Findings indicate that cognitive and behavioral engagement mediated the relationship between students’ background variables and their academic achievement. The analysis of both SEM allows us to understand that academic achievement at the end of the semester is closely related to what happens at the beginning of the semester (e.g., approach to learning, study time). Thus, promoting students’ engagement at the beginning of the semester should be considered a priority, as the first part of the first semester represents a critical period for students and for their integration in college. Thus, universities should consider improving their mechanisms of collecting information to allow for early identification, support, and monitoring of students at risk of dropping out, showing high level of disengagement and low academic achievement.

Relationship Between Students' Prior Academic Achievement and Homework Behavioral Engagement: The Mediating/Moderating Role of Learning Motivation

The interest of assigning homework is frequently discussed due to its alleged low impact on student achievement. One of the current lines of research is to emphasize the quality of student homework engagement rather than the amount of time spent on homework. The aim of this study was to determine (a) the extent to which students’ prior achievement affects their homework engagement (i.e., time spent, time management, and amount of teacher-assigned homework done), and (b) how students’ intrinsic motivation toward homework may mediate or moderate the relationship between prior achievement and the homework engagement variables. A large sample of students from the first 4 years of Secondary Education (N = 1899) completed questionnaires. The results showed that intrinsic motivation partially mediates, but does not moderate, the effect of prior achievement on the three variables related to homework engagement (time spent, time management, and amount of teacher-assigned homework done). These results highlight the importance of considering both students’ current level of achievement and their motivation toward homework engagement when assigning homework.

Individual Precursors of Student Homework Behavioral Engagement: The Role of Intrinsic Motivation, Perceived Homework Utility and Homework Attitude

Currently, the concept of engagement is crucial in the field of learning and school achievement. It is a multidimensional concept (e.g., behavioral, emotional, and cognitive dimensions) that has been widely used as a theoretical framework to explain the processes of school engagement and dropout. However, this conceptual framework has been scarcely used in the field of homework. The aim of the present study was to analyze the role of intrinsic motivation, perceived homework utility, and personal homework attitude as precursors of student homework engagement (behavioral engagement) and, at the same time, how such engagement is the precursor of academic achievement. Seven hundred and thirty students of Compulsory Secondary Education (CSE) (7th to 10th grade) from fourteen schools northern Spain participated. A structural equation model was elaborated on which intrinsic motivation, perceived utility and attitude were observed variables, and student engagement (time spent on homework, time management, and amount of teacher-assigned homework done) and academic achievement (Mathematics, Spanish Language, English Language, and Social Science) were latent variables. The results reveal that (i) intrinsic motivation is a powerful precursor of student behavioral engagement (also perceived utility and attitude, although to a lesser extent), and (ii) academic achievement is closely linked to the level of student engagement, qualifying the results of many of the previous studies conducted from a task-centered perspective (as opposed to a person-centered perspective).

The Role of Prior Achievement as an Antecedent to Student Homework Engagement

The benefits of homework on student learning and academic achievement, to a large extent, depend on the degree of student engagement. Motivational engagement (my intention or why I do the homework), cognitive engagement (how I get involved in homework), and behavioral engagement (how much homework I do, how much time I devote to it, how I manage that time) are key aspects that condition the quality of the process of doing homework, learning, and academic achievement. Prior academic achievement is one of the variables that seems to be positively related to student engagement (both due its motivational component and to the training to do homework). The main purpose of this work was to study in detail this relationship in students of the last stage of Primary Education (N = 516). The results showed that (i) as achievement levels rise, the use of a shallow focus to doing homework decreases (and the use of a deep approach increases); (ii) there is also a progressive increase in the amount of homework done and in the management of the time dedicated to homework. On another hand, as in previous research, (iii) no relationship was observed between the levels of prior achievement and the amount of time spent doing homework.

Kindergarten School Engagement: Linking Early Temperament and Academic Achievement at the Transition to School

RESEARCH FINDINGS

Although children's temperament contributes to their academic success, little is known regarding the mechanisms through which temperament is associated withacademic achievement during the transition to elementary school. One such mechanism may be school engagement, but findings are inconsistent and limited. Across two waves of data at the transition to school, we examined the role of kindergarten emotional and behavioral engagement as links between preschool temperament (positive emotionality, anger, andeffortful control), and kindergartenacademic achievement, among a predominantlyMexican/Mexican-Americansample of 241children drawn from Head Start classrooms. Significant direct effects indicated that preschool anger was negatively,and positive emotionality and effortful control werepositively,associated withkindergarten behavioralengagement.Only preschool anger was significantly associatedwithkindergarten emotional engagement. In turn, kindergarten behavioral, but not emotional, engagement was directly, positively associated withkindergartenacademic achievement. All three preschool temperament measures were indirectly related to kindergarten achievement via kindergarten behavioral engagement, and anger was indirectly related to kindergarten achievement via emotional engagement.

PRACTICE OR POLIC

Findings highlight the importance of understanding the role of engagement as a mechanismthat can foster children'sacademic achievement at a key developmental transition.

The role of preschool teacher-child interactions in academic adjustment: An intervention study with Playing-2-gether

BACKGROUND

Social relationships can serve as important risk or protective factors for child development in general, and academic adjustment in particular.

AIMS

This study investigated the role of teacher-child interactions in academic adjustment among preschool boys at risk of externalizing behaviour, using a randomized controlled trial study with Playing-2-gether (P2G), a 12-week indicated two-component intervention aimed at improving the affective quality of the teacher-child relationship and teacher behaviour management.

SAMPLE

In a sample of 175 preschool boys showing signs of externalizing behaviour (M_age  = 4 years, 9 months, SD_age  = 7 months) and their teachers, we investigated P2G effects on academic engagement as well as on language achievement.

METHODS

Academic engagement was rated by teachers at three occasions within one school year (T1 = pretest, T3 = post-test, and T2 = in-between intervention components). Language achievement was assessed by researchers at pre- and post-test, using a standardized test.

RESULTS

Cross-lagged path analyses revealed a direct intervention effect of P2G on academic engagement at Time 2. In addition, a significant indirect intervention effect was found on academic engagement at Time 3 through academic engagement at Time 2. Finally, academic engagement at Time 2 was found to predict language achievement at post-test. A marginally significant indirect intervention effect was found on language achievement at Time 3, through academic engagement at Time 2.

CONCLUSIONS

This intervention study suggests that teacher-child interactions predict academic engagement over time, which in turn improves language achievement among preschool boys at risk of externalizing behaviour.

Perceived Autonomy Support and Behavioral Engagement in Physical Education: Comment on Yoo (2015)

The role of emotion as moderator of the relationships between perceived autonomy supportive behavior and autonomous motivation and between motivation and behavioral engagement in physical education are discussed.

Classroom peer relationships and behavioral engagement in elementary school: the role of social network equity

Applying social capital and systems theories of social processes, we examine the role of the classroom peer context in the behavioral engagement of low-income students (N = 80) in urban elementary school classrooms (N = 22). Systematic child observations were conducted to assess behavioral engagement among second to fifth graders in the fall and spring of the same school year. Classroom observations, teacher and child questionnaires, and social network data were collected in the fall. Confirming prior research, results from multilevel models indicate that students with more behavioral difficulties or less academic motivation in the fall were less behaviorally engaged in the spring. Extending prior research, classrooms with more equitably distributed and interconnected social ties-social network equity-had more behaviorally engaged students in the spring, especially in classrooms with higher levels of observed organization (i.e., effective management of behavior, time, and attention). Moreover, social network equity attenuated the negative relation between student behavioral difficulties and behavioral engagement, suggesting that students with behavioral difficulties were less disengaged in classrooms with more equitably distributed and interconnected social ties. Findings illuminate the need to consider classroom peer contexts in future research and intervention focused on the behavioral engagement of students in urban elementary schools.

Effect of retention in elementary grades on transition to middle school

The authors investigated the effects of retention in grades 1 to 5 on students' reading and math achievement, teacher-rated engagement, and student-reported school belonging in middle school. From a multiethnic sample (N=784) of children who scored below the median on a test of literacy in grade 1, an average of 75 students subsequently retained in grades 1 to 5 were matched with an average of 299 continuously promoted students on the basis of propensity to be retained in the elementary grades. A total of 20 imputed datasets were analyzed, all of which showed good balance across the 67 baseline covariates used to calculate propensity scores. The hypothesis that retained students, who are "old for grade" when they make the transition to middle school, would have a more difficult transition to middle school than promoted peers was tested with 3-level, piecewise growth modeling. Piece 1 included assessments prior to the transition to middle school, and piece 2 included assessments after the transition. Retained and continuously promoted students did not differ on any of the outcome measures during the year prior to transition, nor did they differ in their post-transition trajectories. Discrepancies between these results and results of prior research are discussed in terms of demographic and generational differences as well as differences in methodological rigor.