Exploring Online Student Engagement During COVID-19 Pandemic in Mongolia

Abstract

Student online engagement has become a challenge for higher education in Mongolia during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study explores student engagement in online learning of Mongolian higher education during the lockdown period. The study assessed differences in student engagement across gender, the tools students used to study, their level of study, and their field of study. It also determined the associations between variables. The data were collected online using the questionnaire developed by Dixson (2015), the scale to measure student online engagement (OST) with four variables: skills, emotion, participation, and performance. The tests of Kruskal-Wallis, Shapiro-Wilk, Cramer’s V, Point biserial as well as Spearman rho were used for the analyses. The most significant variables to measure student engagement were participation and performance. One of the important results was that the internet access was highly correlated with the performance variable (p=.00). The study did not find any significant differences or correlation for “emotion” expressing the devotion and commitment to the online study.