Distance education and acquired learningin the context of health emergencies, a causal model

Abstract

In most western societies, the Covid-19 pandemic has generated various inconveniences in the educational system, which affected each community in a different way. Within the framework of this reality, the objective of this work is to develop a statistical model that allows explaining the causal relationships that different aspects of distance education present with respect to the perception that students have about the level of learning acquired. The participants in this study were 101 students of both sexes (57.43% women, M = 29.02, SD = 6.82 ), who in the 2021 academic year were enrolled in 3rd, 4th and 5th year subjects of courses taught at a public university in Argentina. The research responds to a design of a non-experimental nature, with an explanatory style through a survey, a quantitative line and cross-section, a correlational type and a prospective imprint. In order to collect the observational evidence, an ad hoc questionnaire was used –whose validity and reliability were analyzed– made up of sixteen items grouped into three dimensions (learning, teaching and context). The implemented inferential analyzes allowed to determine the causal model that best fits the reality under study and that would be useful to explain the data and/or predict future observations. The empirically contrasted multiple dependency relationship was used as an input to make some considerations that enable psychopedagogical improvements linked to the eLearning process, in the academic and institutional field of sample selection.