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Academic procrastination refers to individuals' unnecessary postponement of their coursework and is harmful for academic performance. When situated in self‐placed and remote learning environments, students' tendency to procrastinate increases. Therefore, understanding why students procrastinate and identifying who is more likely to delay unnecessarily in online learning environments is an important area to study. The goal of this study was to respond to this call by examining the structural relations between conscientiousness, prior online learning experience, achievement emotions and academic procrastination in online learning environments using structural equation modelling. In particular, two main facets of conscientiousness—proactive and inhibitive—were examined in order to understand which facet was more responsible for procrastination, how each facet was related to procrastination and to determine which facet of conscientiousness should be the primary target for intervention in future experimental research. A total of 746 students from 49 secondary and postsecondary schools participated in the current study. The results showed that the proactive aspect of conscientiousness was negatively related to academic procrastination through the pathway of enjoyment. The inhibitive aspect of conscientiousness was negatively related to academic procrastination through the pathways of negative emotions. Although prior online learning experience did not have a significant and direct association with academic procrastination, it was indirectly related to students' tendency to put off coursework through the pathways of enjoyment and negative emotions. Of all the paths, negative emotions had the strongest associations with academic procrastination in online learning environments. The findings of indirect effects suggest that students with low conscientiousness, the inhibitive aspect in particular, and few prior online learning experiences are more likely to procrastinate in online classes possibly owing to the suboptimal emotional experiences aroused during their learning processes. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topicConscientiousness has a direct association with academic procrastination in in‐person classes.Prior online learning experience has direct associations with students' adaptive regulatory processes in online classes.Achievement emotion is an integral part of online learning.What this paper addsConscientiousness has a direct association with academic procrastination in online learning environments.Prior online learning experience has no direct associations with academic procrastination in online learning environments.Conscientiousness indirectly relates to academic procrastination through achievement emotions in online learning environments.Prior online learning experience indirectly relates to academic procrastination through achievement emotions in online learning environments.Implications for practice and/or policyInstructors are suggested to pay attention to students with low conscientiousness and few prior online learning experiences since they are more likely to procrastinate in online learning environments.Students' tendency to procrastinate in online learning environments is strongly associated with their emotional experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gamification is typically implemented digitally. However, digital gamification is not always possible because of limited resources and logistical problems. It is thus necessary to explore low‐threshold gamification methods that can be easily adopted in classrooms. One such method is non‐digital gamification using physical game design elements. Currently, the literature provides a limited understanding of the design and effects of non‐digital gamification. It is also unclear whether mixed gamification (ie, a combination of digital and non‐digital gamification) is better than purely non‐digital gamification. We explored these topics using an explanatory sequential mixed‐methods design to compare the effectiveness of non‐digital gamification in a face‐to‐face course and mixed gamification in a blended course in terms of student learning achievement, cognitive engagement and course satisfaction. Two secondary grade classes were randomly assigned to the mixed (N = 52) or non‐digital (N = 52) gamification conditions. Contrary to our expectations, the quantitative results showed that the two approaches improved the students' learning achievement to the same extent. Although the students in the non‐digital gamification condition reported significantly higher‐course satisfaction than those in the mixed condition, the improvement in student cognitive engagement was significantly greater in the mixed gamification condition than in the non‐digital condition. Through focus group interviews, we analysed the students' learning experiences and synthesised the factors that influenced student cognitive engagement and course satisfaction. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Gamification is increasingly being used to increase student engagement and enhance learning.Gamification studies have mostly focused on digital modes, which often require gamified digital platforms or applications.Non‐digital gamification can be an effective method to foster learning, but the design and evaluation of non‐digital gamification is at an early stage.What this paper adds We designed non‐digital and mixed (ie, a combination of digital and non‐digital) gamification programmes and compared their effects using an explanatory sequential mixed‐methods design.Both gamification approaches led to a similar improvement in learning achievement.While non‐digital gamification fostered students' course satisfaction, mixed gamification was more effective in improving students' cognitive engagement.Implications for practice and/or policy Non‐digital gamification can be an effective low‐threshold solution for instructors. It is worth further improving the non‐digital gamification approach in school settings as it is cost‐effective and can be transferred between classrooms.The benefits of mixed gamification should not be ignored because of its affordances that improve students' cognitive engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we adopt an ecological perspective to reflect on how a specific Italian school cluster adapted to the challenges of the COVID‐19 pandemic by focusing on how students experienced the interplay between continuity and change in school teaching and learning practices caused by the pandemic. Specifically, the study investigates how the school's physical/virtual learning system was (re)configured to provide new opportunities for learning to a thousand‐plus population of primary and secondary students, and how they reacted to the transition to distance learning in terms of participation, autonomy, motivation and engagement. The research adopts a mixed method approach, based on school management system data and a survey tool, and analyses the students' response to the emergency from the perspectives of the students themselves, their teachers and their parents. While these converged in positive evaluation of the experience, a number of lessons were learnt, such as the importance of building on favourable pre‐existing conditions and leveraging a solid shared school culture to promote a prompt reaction to the emergency. Significantly, students with an immigrant background displayed varying degrees of participation in online activities. Overall, for each of the three stakeholder groups surveyed, solid pre‐existing digital competence levels and close collaboration within the school community were the most important factors for non‐traumatic transition to distance learning. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic? Research on the relationship between the COVID‐19 pandemic and the effects on teaching and learning processes is constantly increasing.Most recently published studies focus on higher education, while very few investigate the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on K‐12 education.Very few papers have studied the interplay between change and continuity within an educational ecosystem in times of crisis.What this paper adds? This is one of the first studies to analyse the process of systematic transition from onsite learning to online learning within the Italian school system in response to the pandemic.This study employs a multiple perspective research approach to analyse Emergency Remote Education in a sizeable school cluster, with a specific focus on student response.Teachers, students and their families all saw solid pre‐existing digital competence and close school community collaboration as key factors facilitating rapid adjustment to the emergency.Implications for practice and policy Having a solid common school culture to rely on facilitates prompt emergency reaction.Encouraging the creation of professional communities of practice that comprise both expert and novice teachers can help prepare educators to deal with an educational emergency through adoption and appropriate use of technological solutions.Collaboration between school and families proves to be a key factor for dealing with emergencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A discussion forum is a valuable tool to support student learning in online contexts. However, interactions in online discussion forums are sparse, leading to other issues such as low engagement and dropping out. Recent educational studies have examined the affordances of conversational agents (CA) powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically support student participation in discussion forums. However, few studies have paid attention to the safety of CAs. This study aimed to address the safety challenges of CAs constructed with educational big data to support learning. Specifically, we proposed a safety‐aware CA model, benchmarked with two state‐of‐the‐art (SOTA) models, to support high school student learning in an online algebra learning platform. We applied automatic text analysis to evaluate the safety and socio‐emotional support levels of CA‐generated and human‐generated texts. A large dataset was used to train and evaluate the CA models, which consisted of all discussion post‐reply pairs (n = 2,097,139) by 71,918 online math learners from 2015 to 2021. Results show that while SOTA models can generate supportive texts, their safety is compromised. Meanwhile, our proposed model can effectively enhance the safety of generated texts while providing comparable support. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Online discussion forums have been plagued by a lack of interaction among students due to factors such as expectations to receive no response and perceptions of topic irrelevance which lead to low motivation to participate.AI‐based conversational agents can automatically support students' interactions in online discussion forums at a large scale, and their generated responses can be human‐like, contextually coherent and socio‐emotionally supportive.Unsafe discourse exchanges between students and conversational agents can be dangerous as identity attacks, aggravation and bullying behaviours embedded in discourses can disrupt students' knowledge inquiry and negatively influence student motivation and engagement. However, few educational studies have paid attention to the safety of conversational agents.What this paper adds This study proposes and synthesized strategies to build AI‐based conversational agents that automatically support online discussions with safe and supportive discourses.This study reveals the relationship between discourse safety and social support, suggesting supportive discourses can also be unsafe.This study enriches the literature on educational conversational agents by synthesizing a conceptual framework on discourse safety and social support, and by proposing concrete algorithmic strategies to improve the safety of conversational agents.Implications for practice and/or policy Researchers and practitioners can adopt strategies in this study such as generation control, open‐sourced models and public API services to evaluate students' discourse safety for early intervention or modify existing conversational agents to be safety‐aware.Practitioners can utilize the proposed conversational agent to automatically support students both safely and socio‐emotionally at a large scale.Practitioners should be cautious when examining social support with automatic analysis, as not all supportive texts are safe. While unsafe texts can provide emotional support, it does not justify their appropriateness in a learning environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online learning is currently adopted by educational institutions worldwide to provide students with ongoing education during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Even though online learning research has been advancing in uncovering student experiences in various settings (i.e., tertiary, adult, and professional education), very little progress has been achieved in understanding the experience of the K‐12 student population, especially when narrowed down to different school‐year segments (i.e., primary and secondary school students). This study explores how students at different stages of their K‐12 education reacted to the mandatory full‐time online learning during the COVID‐19 pandemic. For this purpose, we conducted a province‐wide survey study in which the online learning experience of 1,170,769 Chinese students was collected from the Guangdong Province of China. We performed cross‐tabulation and Chi‐square analysis to compare students' online learning conditions, experiences, and expectations. Results from this survey study provide evidence that students' online learning experiences are significantly different across school years. Foremost, policy implications were made to advise government authorises and schools on improving the delivery of online learning, and potential directions were identified for future research into K‐12 online learning. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Online learning has been widely adopted during the COVID‐19 pandemic to ensure the continuation of K‐12 education.Student success in K‐12 online education is substantially lower than in conventional schools.Students experienced various difficulties related to the delivery of online learning.What this paper adds Provide empirical evidence for the online learning experience of students in different school years.Identify the different needs of students in primary, middle, and high school.Identify the challenges of delivering online learning to students of different age.Implications for practice and/or policy Authority and schools need to provide sufficient technical support to students in online learning.The delivery of online learning needs to be customised for students in different school years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]