Abstract
Universities are transitioning from traditional classroom teaching to technology-enhanced teaching modes to meet the changing demands of their customer, the students. This shift highlights the importance of examining and improving e-learning strategies to enhance educational experiences and fulfil their customer's expectations. The ongoing transformation of the educational landscape through e-learning requires comprehensive research and comprehension of students' motivation, challenges and value perceptions when engaging in e-learning activities to maximise the use of technology for education purposes. This thesis is contextualised within a university setting, where e-learning platforms and student autonomy are more developed. While the findings may provide indicative insights, they cannot be directly generalised to high schools due to structural, pedagogical, and developmental differences. This limitation will be acknowledged in the conclusion section under limitations and future research. This thesis employs a three-stage qualitative method to explore factors influencing student e-learning engagement. It comprised 39 in-depth interviews and 16 seven-day dairy documentation entries from the University of Otago undergraduate students who used university e-learning services across different disciplines.
This thesis provides an e-learning ecosystem model demonstrating a notable advancement in understanding university e-learning tools/services setting. This thesis utilises the Situation-Organism-Behavioural-Consequences framework to explain the complex and interconnected factors that influence student experiences and outcomes in e-learning. The findings indicate that social support effectiveness and individual differences fundamentally impact student motivation and engagement with university e-learning tools/service settings. Findings highlight the complex nature of social support effectiveness and individual differences as important moderators between environmental situation and organism. It suggests that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach may not be effective due to the individual’s learning preferences between individuals may have a significant impact on students' e-learning engagement and learning performance, particularly in the context of post-pandemic education.
The thesis validates Herzberg’s Dual-Factor theory within an e-learning context, demonstrating that facilitators (social interaction, technology self-efficacy, digital literacy, perceived ease of use) and inhibitors (e-learning complexity, cognitive load, system quality issues, information quality) perform through different psychological mechanisms. This explains that decreasing technological barriers sometimes cannot enhance student e-learning engagement; it requires a distinct, focused approach to build an effective university e-learning tools/services setting. The feedback loops and support systems demonstrate the evolution of e-learning ecosystems through ongoing cycles of adaptation. These mechanisms illustrate that university e-learning tools/services setting should be perceived as dynamic, evolving systems instead of fixed platforms. It also emphasises that successful implementation necessitates a robust infrastructure foundation beyond mere technological solutions.
These insights contribute to both theoretical understanding and practical implications in university e-learning tools/services setting. Theoretically, this thesis addresses significant gaps in how various components interact to collectively shape student e-learning engagement and learning outcomes, moving beyond fragmented approaches to provide an integrative conceptual framework. This ecosystem perspective provides an integrated construct that links technological, psychological, educational, and social dimensions previously studied individually. Identifying specific mediating and moderating relationships illuminates the exact mechanisms by which different factors influence each other, resolving apparent contradictions in previous studies that similar interventions produce different results. Applying Herzberg’s dual-factor theory and consumption value theory to extend these theoretical frameworks to new domains demonstrates their explanatory power in understanding university e-learning tools/services setting. Practically, these contributions provide universities with a comprehensive framework for improving the effectiveness of e-learning through ecosystem-centric approaches that address multiple factors simultaneously. Understanding these insights of students could guide higher educational institutions to ensure ongoing evaluation, improve the quality of e-learning resources and maintain students' satisfaction.