Readiness, Attitude, and Engagement: A Triadic Study of Student Participation in Self-Paced Online Learning

Abstract

This study investigated the relationships between readiness, attitude, and engagement among higher education students. Adopting a descriptive survey method of quantitative research approach, the study analyzed numerical data from a sample of 120 students, including undergraduate, postgraduate, B.Ed., Ph.D. students in the 3-government college of Ranchi district. Simple random sampling technique was used to gather data using a self-constructed questionnaire comprising twenty-four close-ended items, achieving a high reliability score with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.956. The findings indicated that very positive correlations existed between readiness and engagement (r = 0.844, p < .001), between attitude and engagement (r = 0.831, p < .001) and between readiness and attitude (r = 0.777, p < .001) suggesting that better-prepared students with positive attitude are more engaged in self-paced learning, with an overall correlation of r= 0.889 among Readiness, Attitude, and Engagement. The R² value of 0.790 indicated that 79% of the variance in Engagement was explained by Readiness and Attitude of higher education students. Furthermore, no significant attitude differences were found between male/female or urban/rural students (t = -0.212, 0.077; p = 0.832, 0.939). These findings were important in fostering readiness and positive attitudes to enhance student engagement in self-paced online learning.