Research On The Influence Of Characteristics On E-learning Outcome Of College Students

With the rapid development of information technology,college students are more and more dependent on e-learning nowadays.On one hand,e-learning can enhance interactions across different spatial and temporal learning scenarios,optimize learning experiences,and meet the personalized demands from individual learners,on the other hand,it also requires learners to skillfully integrate technology into learning,proficiently get access to and identify desired information,and better regulate oneself to fit into e-learning environment,thus has pros and cons for college students.As learners,college students should know how to develop relevant capabilities on their own to make full use of e-learning,which is a realistic question worthy of attention and exploration.Literature reviews indicate that learner characteristics such as computer self-efficacy can affect the e-learning outcome,but deeper investigation reveals that conclusions in these research can be diverse or even opposite,and are often drawn from one or several courses despite of the diversity of e-learning context.As a further step,this paper focus on eight learner characteristics selected,using questionnaires and scales to understand the status quo of utilization of e-learning by college students,measure the level of studenti s characteristics and outcome of e-learning using self-reporting,and comprehensively examine the influence of learner characteristics on e-learning outcome of college students.A lot of research and comparison has been done on instruments applicable to e-learning behavior,relevant learner characteristics and self-reported perceived learning,and a customized version of questionnaire including 5 parts and 61 items was developed for this research,which was later distributed to college students as respondents randomly on Internet,collecting 454 valid samples using an online survey approach before closed.Preliminary analysis of the survey data shows that this questionnaire has a high reliability and validity.Indicators of descriptive analysis can help us shaping a holistic view of various aspects of survey samples and status quo of utilization of e-learning by college students,independent sample T-test and ANOVA can examine the group differences in terms of the characteristics of learners,and bivariate correlation analysis can infer the relevant relationship between each learner characteristic and e-learning outcome.Finally,this research comprehensively examines the extent of learner characteristic's influences on e-learning outcome of college students with the help of multiple variable linear regression modeling.Several conclusions have been drawn based on quantitative data analysis,which are:a)College student use e-learning for the main purpose of information access,and are involved in interaction and collaboration in a much lower frequency.b)mobile learning has become the most popular approach of e-learning,c)college student make inadequate usage of e-learning platform,and d)there are differences among learner characteristics influencing the e-learning outcome of college students.Specifically,when comparing the influence of eight learner characteristics on four aspects of e-learning outcome,namely the overall aspect,the cognitive aspect,the affective aspect and the psychomotor aspect,we can infer that each learner characteristic are significantly correlated to e-learning outcome,four learner characteristics namely,metacognitive,computer self-efficacy,interaction and collaboration,and preferences and attitudes,can significantly affect e-learning outcome on overall aspect,and other combination of learner characteristics can significantly affect other aspects of e-leaming outcome.Finally,several suggestion and recommendations was provided for college students based on conclusions above.First,college student should update their outlook of learning,establish a sense of lifelong learning,and embrace e-learning with a positive attitude,the second is to improve information literacy,enhance the ability of using technology for the sake of one's own,obtain and process information efficiently,identify the authenticity effectively,and eliminate the disturbance of irrelevant information,the third is to be involved in interaction and collaboration,enhance the emotional experience,and obtain a sense of identity and a sense of belonging to learning community,the fourth is to develop metacognitive level,cultivate self-learning ability,choose one's own proper learning path,and making effective planning,monitoring,evaluation and adjustment of learning strategies.