The Influence of Teacher–Student Interaction on the Effects of Online Learning: Based on a Serial Mediating Model

During the COVID-19 pandemic, online education has become an important approach to learning in the information era and an important research topic in the field of educational technology as well as that of education in general. Teacher–student interaction in online education is an important factor affecting students’ learning performance. This study employed a questionnaire survey to explore the influence of teacher–student interaction on learning effects in online education as well as the mediating role of psychological atmosphere and learning engagement. The study involved 398 college students studying at Chinese universities as the research object. Participants filled out a self-report questionnaire. The study found that (1) the level of teacher–student interaction positively affected students’ learning effects (r = 0.649, p < 0.01). (2) The psychological atmosphere mediated the positive effect of the level of teacher–student interaction on learning effects with mediating effect value of 0.1248. (3) Learning engagement mediated the positive effect of teacher–student interaction on learning effects with a mediating effect value of 0.1539. (4) The psychological atmosphere and learning engagement play a chain-mediating role in the mechanism of teacher–student interaction affecting students’ learning effects; that is, teacher–student interaction promotes students’ learning engagement by creating a good psychological atmosphere, which, in turn, influences learning effects. The mediating effect value was 0.0403. The results indicate that teacher–student interaction not only directly affects students’ learning effects but also influences students’ learning effects through the mediating effect of the psychological atmosphere and learning engagement.