How to make online education effective? Prediction of three essential types of interaction and internet self-efficacy on student achievement motivation: Relatedness and competence as mediators

Objectives: This study investigated the predicting effects of course-related interpersonal interaction, learner-content interaction and internet self-efficacy on student achievement motivation through inserting two basic psychological needs—relatedness and competence from self-determination theory (SDT), and provide some practical implications to enhance online education effectiveness.
Methods: 119 college students who studied in Hong Kong were asked to complete an online questionnaire including the items to measure their course-related interaction, internet self-efficacy, perceived relatedness and competence, and student achievement motivation.
Results: Using PROCESS, the results showed that perceived relatedness could partially mediate the relationship between course-related interpersonal interaction and student achievement motivation, while perceived competence could also partially mediate the correlation between learner-content interaction and student achievement motivation, and the correlation between internet self-efficacy and student achievement motivation respectively.
Conclusion: These results illustrate that the satisfaction of internal psychological needs could connect effects of three crucial predictors in online educational process—course-related interpersonal interaction, learner-content interaction and internet self-efficacy with the student achievement motivation, which eventually promote the effectiveness of online education.
Implication: the study proposes a student-centered way to reflect about education, and encourage educators to achieve effectiveness of education through designing the activities based on students’ instinctive needs. All rights reserved.