How do university students’ personalities affect their engagement, satisfaction, and stickiness toward E-learning?: evidence from Australia

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of e-learning systems worldwide. While much research has explored how learners' personality traits affect their acceptance of e-learning, there's a gap in understanding their readiness to continue using online platforms post-pandemic. This study aims to address this gap by developing a more comprehensive framework for examining the role of the Big -five personality traits in student engagement, satisfaction, and stickiness with e-learning platforms. Data was collected from 403 students across three Australian higher education providers and analyzed using structural equation modeling. The findings indicate that agreeableness and conscientiousness positively influence student engagement, while extroversion and agreeableness impact satisfaction. Furthermore, students' extrovert and conscientious personality traits influence their stickiness towards e-learning. Additionally, student engagement positively correlates with satisfaction, leading to greater stickiness towards elearning. These insights can inform the development of more user-centric e-learning designs and contribute to future research on educational technologies and sustainable user behavior.

KEYWORDS:

• E-learning systems
• university students
• personality traits
• satisfaction
• learning engagement
• stickiness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics approval

This project (project number: 0000022645) has been approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of Central Queensland University.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to their containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rongbin Yang

Dr Rongbin Yang is a marketing professional and researcher. He provides consulting services to SMEs and not-for-profit organizations. He also teaches business courses for several institutes in Australia. His current research interests include user adoption of new information technologies. His research papers have been accepted by international conferences and journals, such as Electronic Markets, Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, and others.

Santoso Wibowo

Dr Santoso Wibowo is an associate professor and postgraduate research coordinator at Central Queensland University. His research interests are intelligent information systems, multicriteria decision analysis, approximate reasoning, and knowledge management. He has published in Journal of Computer Information Systems, Information Technology and People, and others.

Sameera Mubarak

Dr Sameera Mubarak is a lecturer at the University of South Australia. Her research interests include cybersecurity, computer crime, information security management, and knowledge management. She has published in Computers in Human Behavior, Computers and Security, and others.

Mubarak Rahamathulla

Dr Mubarak Rahamathulla is a lecturer at The University of Western Australia. His area of research interest is child safety issues in cyberspace and empowering young people to maximize the use of the internet and benefit from it. His research has appeared in the Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, Australasian Conference on Information Systems Proceedings, and others.