University student academic competitions can test students' learning outcomes, improve their academic performance and stimulate their interest in learning. Exploring the behavioural mechanisms influencing students' academic competition is quite important, but there is currently little research on this topic. This study aims to fill this gap in the…

The primary objective of this paper is twofold; firstly, to analyse the relationship between metacognitive strategies and learning performance. Secondly, a new mediator is proposed, namely digital literacy. Mental resilience is an omnitemporal skill that enables individuals to gain resilience thinking to successfully adapt to life tasks. Although…

Purpose: Social media has shown a substantial influence on the daily lives of students, mainly due to the overuse of smartphones. Students use social media both for academic and non-academic purposes. Due to an increase in the usage of social media, academicians are now confronting pedagogical issues, and the question arises as to whether the use…

Meta-analytic Structural Equation Modeling (MASEM) is the combination of meta-analysis (MA) and structural equation modeling (SEM). With new MASEM methodologies developed over the past few years, there is an opportunity to compare the past approaches with the new ones. The purpose of this dissertation is two-fold. First, the parameter estimates,…

Online collaborative learning (OCL) has received significant attention, but the ultimate goal of adopting OCL is neglected, especially in higher education context. To bridge the research gap, the present study applied OCL theory integrating with cognitive development to evaluate the effectiveness of student learning performance through OCL. To our…

This work has investigated the relationship between SM use and its four antecedents, i.e., perceived interactivity, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and perceived enjoyment. Moreover, it has also examined the association of SM use with its outcome variables, i.e., active learning, creativity and collaborative learning, leading to…

There is limited research regarding university students' academic achievement and what influences it. We argue that university students' academic achievement could be influenced by different factors to those observed for schoolchildren. We investigated whether university students' beliefs about intelligence ('implicit theories'), self-efficacy and…

Prior research has proposed that boredom and academic performance are reciprocally causal of one another. The present study sought to better understand the relationship between boredom and academic performance by, for the first time: distinguishing between boredom proneness, state boredom, and judgments of task boringness; conducting experiments…

New technologies are changing the way we see and understand university education, with the advent of new, more flexible organization methods capable of reaching people via class formats like Small Private Online Courses (SPOCs). However, studies which have analyzed these types of courses have focused on their implementation and not on the…

Purpose: Assignments have been linked with various benefits, including a higher quality of learning and academic achievement. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between assignment completion and academic achievement in higher education. Specifically, it investigated the impact of instructor feedback and three constructs of…

Introduction: The discussion around academic achievement in the context of distance education has raised the need to develop studies that allow identifying the variables that best predict it. The goal of this study was to analyze the fit of a structural equations model that assumes that sociodemographic variables, personality traits, motivation…

This research focused on the potential of project-based learning and blended learning, which offer a distinctive cross-point in regard to building 21st-century skills in the classroom. Specifically, this research hypothesized that using the BPBL approach has an effect on perceived self-efficacy, perceived enjoyment, perceived usefulness,…

This dissertation implements self-determination theory to examine learning environments conducive to student motivation in higher education. Specifically, this work is concerned with measuring the satisfaction and frustration of students' three basic psychological needs (BPNs), the need for autonomy, relatedness, and competence (ARC). To do so,…

This study looks at whether creativity and critical thinking help students solve problems and improve their grades by mediating the link between 21st century skills (learning motivation, cooperativity, and interaction with peers, engagement with peers, and a smart classroom environment). The mediating relationship between creativity and critical…

College students are more autonomous and self-determined with their academic experience. They are motivated and engaged academically to obtain desired outcomes and meet their psychological needs. By using structural equation models to analyze data derived from three cohorts of the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education, this study aims to…