Detecting the effect of student engagement in an SVVR school-based course on higher level competence development in elementary schools by SEM

ABSTRACT

This research aims to explore the latent effect of elementary student engagement in a Spherical Video-based Virtual Reality (SVVR) environment for a school-based course on higher level competence development. Student engagement and higher level competence development were investigated using a valid sample of 324 students from five elementary schools in China. Factor analysis and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) were used to analyze the data. The fitness of the items for each scale of the student engagement survey and higher level competence development survey indicated a sufficient fit and also confirmed the questionnaire’s structure. The relevant factors of student engagement promote their higher level competence development in the model. The SEM analysis shows that student engagement has a significant positive impact on higher level competence development. The findings could be a good reference for those who intend to develop a specific topic of school-based courses on technology for fostering students’ higher level competence development.

KEYWORDS:

• Student engagement
• higher level competence development
• spherical video-based virtual reality
• structural equation modeling
• school-based course

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Fu-Rong Sun is a professor at College of Teacher Education, Dean of the School of Education, and Deputy Director of the Graduate School for Curriculum and Teaching, Wenzhou University, China. Her research interests include flipped classroom, teacher education in ICT, classroom ecology and school-based curriculum development.

Long-Fei Pan is a graduate student at College of Teacher Education, Wenzhou University, China. His research interests include curriculum and teaching theory, mobile learning, digital learning and AI in education.

Rong-Gen Wan is an associate professor at College of Teacher Education, Wenzhou University, China. His research interests include curriculum and teaching theory, educational measurement and evaluation.

Hui Li is a graduate student at College of Teacher Education, Wenzhou University, China. Her research interests include learning literacy of primary school and family education.

Shu-Jing Wu is an associate professor at College of Teacher Education, Wenzhou University, China. Her research interests include flipped classroom, learning analytics, digital learning and AI in education.

Additional information

Funding

Funding of this research work is supported by 2015 Research Project of Higher Education Teaching Reform, “Exploration and Practice of the Teacher Training Model of Excellent Middle Schools in Local Comprehensive Universities”, Zhejiang, China, under grant Project No. [jg2015156].