Influence of OTC on OLE for college students: mediating effect of academic emotion and moderating effect of gender

With the impact of the global epidemic, online learning has become an irreplaceable form of learning for students, and has been widely concerned by the education circles. Based on Noddings’ caring theory and social role theory, A survey of 1954 college students was conducted to examine students’ on-line teacher care (OTC), online academic emotion (OAE) and online learning engagement (OLE). The results of correlation analysis find that: (1) There are significant positive correlations among the three variables: OTC, OAE and OLE; (2) OAE plays a part of mediating role between OTC and OLE; (3) Gender has a significant moderating effect on the first half of the mediation path in the model of “OTC→ OAE→OLE”. OTC has a significant positive predictive effect on OAE, and among them, the positive predictive effect of male college students is stronger. The conclusion of this study contributes to reveal the formation mechanism and individual differences of college students’ OLE, which has reference value for the intervention of college students’ OLE.