The influence of gender, personality, cognitive and affective student engagement on academic engagement in educational virtual worlds

Abstract

Educational virtual worlds (EVWs) are emerging as immersive learning environments that allow students to engage in experiential learning. However, understanding whether individual student differences influence learning behaviours and adapting the EVW accordingly has not been extensively investigated. This paper reports an experimental study with 115 undergraduate students to explore the link between their gender, personality, cognitive and affective engagement in relation to their academic engagement, measured by a quiz after using the world. We also explore whether providing hints can improve their academic engagement in the EVW. Only personal support (a factor of affective engagement) and intrinsic motivation (a factor of cognitive engagement) were found to be related to the quiz score. Also the personality dimension of Openness indicated student propensity to accept support.