An exploration of factors effecting university students’ perceived knowledge transferability during COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on education worldwide, leading to abrupt shifts in learning delivery methods which presented challenges for both educators and stu-dents. The challenges required students to employ the use of online self-regulated learning strategies, as online learning environments require the use of self-regulation more than in face-to-face learning contexts. Additionally, the satisfaction of students’ basic psychological needs is likely to be impacted by the change in learning environments. Perceived knowledge trans-ferability can be considered as one way to evaluate the success of university’s conduction of learning during the pandemic. Thus, this study focused on the higher education context and investigates the relationships between basic psychological need satisfaction and online self-regulated learning strategies on perceived knowledge transferability following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Participants included 323 students from the University of Oulu. Likert-style instruments were used to evaluate the variables of interest. Quantitative methods of correlation and regression analyses examine the predictors of perceived knowledge transferability from the demographic, basic psychological needs, and self-regulated learning variables.

This study contributes to the existing research by establishing the prediction of online self-regulated learning strategies and perceived knowledge transferability, as well as solidifying the satisfaction of basic psychological needs as predictors. The findings suggest that perceived knowledge transferability can be viewed as a goal of self-regulated students rather than a learning outcome. These insights can inform the design of higher education practices in the post-pandemic era and expand perceived knowledge transferability research to include self-regulated learning.