Students’ internal driving force or environment external driving force? Configuring digital learning power heterogeneity in a smart education environment

Abstract

Smart education, with its intelligent, individualized, and technologized content, represents people’s lofty expectations for future education. It provides a good learning platform for teaching and an important environment in which students’ digital learning power can be developed in the context of the information technology era. Digital learning power is the ability to use and study information technology. Based on the Ecosystem Theory, this study applied the fsQCA method for analyzing the effectiveness of the development paths of digital learning power in a smart education environment. The study verified that different configurations could achieve a same goal, thus refreshing the understanding of teachers and students on how multiple concurrent factors can influence digital learning power. The key to teaching in a smart education environment relies on how teachers understand their students and how they boost their students’ internal learning driving forces instead of depending on intelligent technologies. This study shows that in order to develop students’ digital learning power in a smart education environment, the coordination between students and technologies, rather than the application of a single intelligent device, should be emphasized.