Hey Alexa... Examining Factors Influencing the Educational Use of AI-Enabled Voice Assistants during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a rapid growth of online learning. While majority of the current research focus on different learning management systems, massive open online courses, or even specific softwares like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, the use of artificial-intelligence (AI) based voice assistants (VAs) for the purpose of online education is very rare. In this work we propose, validate, and test a research model that explains the continuance usage of VAs by students for learning purpose during their home quarantine period. We consider novel pandemic-specific psychological factors like loneliness and self-quarantine, together with anthropomorphic factors like voice attractiveness of the VAs for proposing the research model. The factors of satisfaction and continuance usage are borrowed from Expectation Confirmation Theory. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling is used for testing the proposed model. © 2023 IEEE.

Applying the Stimulus Organism Response Framework to Explain Student's Academic Self-concept in Online Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Online learning has been a challenge for the students in times of the pandemic. In this context, academic self-concept (ASC) is an important aspect that has been under-researched. We develop a research model in this work based upon the Stimulus Organism Response (SOR) framework for explaining student's ASC, and how it is formed from four unique engagement types and the quality of the online learning systems. Data is collected from a two country study (India and Thailand) across two big public universities specializing in STEM education. A Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) approach is used for the purpose of model building and validation. Results indicate that online system quality affects behavioral, cognitive, and affective engagement dimensions of students, while these three engagement dimensions further significantly affect the student's ASC. Agentic engagement does not have any role in the entire online teaching–learning process. Based on the results, the theoretical and practical implications are discussed. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.