Relevance of Students’ Goals for Learning Engagement and Knowledge Gains in an Online Learning Course

Online courses are an important form of educational delivery worldwide, yet students differ in how well they learn from them. Following psychological and educational research, students’ goals can be considered relevant personal predictors of these differences. In the present study, we strive to better understand differences in students’ learning engagement and learning gains and investigate how they are related to their achievement goals. We distinguish between two types of mastery goals (task and learning goals) along with performance approach goals and performance avoidance goals. We constructed an online course and assessed 182 undergraduates’ goals and prior knowledge before, as well as their knowledge gains after learning with the course. Through learning analytics, we measured learning engagement during the course based on nine objective indicators concerning usage, time, and clicks. Structural equation modelling showed that task goals but not learning goals were beneficial for learning engagement and, in turn, learning gains. This paints a more nuanced picture of how mastery goals matter and illuminates how students’ goals form a relevant premise for successful online learning. While online courses may differ in design and support provided, our findings imply that personal learner characteristics, such as student motivations, should also be acknowledged.