Optimization design of the online learning environment for ethnic college students: the perspective of the emotional participation

ABSTRACT

The emotional participation of online learning is a process-oriented emotional indicator that measures learners’ learning effects. Existing studies have shown there is little research on online-learning emotional participation, and even fewer have studied the online learning participation of ethnic college students. In order to study the online learning participation of ethnic college students, this paper tried to build the online-learning emotional participation theory model, which included four dimensions: learning interest, self-efficacy, self-worth and the sense of belonging. Based on the survey of 723 students from Yunnan Minzu University in China, we analysed the structural and quantitative relationships among the four dimensions of online-learning emotional participation of ethnic and Han college students respectively. The results show that there are significant differences in the online-learning emotional participation between ethnic and Han college students, especially their sense of belonging. Furthermore, in order to build a better online learning environment for ethnic college students and enhance their sense of belonging, an online learning community model is proposed.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotional participation
• ethnic college students
• online learning
• the sense of belonging

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Nature Science Fund Project [grant number 61562093]; Special Project on Teacher Education of Yunnan Education Scientific Planning [grant number GJZ171802]; Key Project of Applied Basic Research Program of Yunnan Province [grant number 2016FA024].

Notes on contributors

Jie Gao

Jie Gao is a master student from the School of Information Science and Technology, Yunnan Normal University. Her research interests include ethnic education information and the data analysis.

Bo Zhao

Bo Zhao is a professor and postgraduate tutor from the School of Information Science and Technology, Yunnan Normal University. Her research interests include intelligent teaching system and knowledge engineering.

Ying Xiong

Ying Xiong is an associate professor from the School of Foreign Languages, Yunnan Normal University. Her research directions are ethnic teacher education and cross-cultural communication.

Jianhou Gan

Jianhou Gan is a professor and postgraduate tutor from the Key Laboratory of Educational Information for Nationalities, Ministry of Education, Yunnan Normal University. His research interest is education informationization.