Student Engagement with Online Tutorial: A Perspective on Flow Theory

Abstract

When students are dealing with online tutorial, there are challengers they must answer using any skill they have. The challenge and skill must be at the same ‘height’ in order for them to immerse with online tutorial activities. Several aspects will be considered as challenge and skill. One challenge under the scrutiny is the page length used to present course materials. The length of tutorial presented in an online tutorial portal varies depends on its topic. The comfort of reading long tutorial depends on how the materials are presented in an online tutorial website, whether it is presented as one long page or shorter multi pages. The comfort that the students obtain from reading an online tutorial may influence whether they decide to continue reading the material or abandon it. This paper reports the result of a study to investigate how tutorial length influences student engagement. The research method employed in this study was a laboratory experiment followed by a post experiment survey where respondents were asked to give their opinion about several statements related to the research variables. Respondents were students who were voluntarily agree to participate in this experiment; total respondents were 95 students. Six hypotheses were tested using PLS, and all of them were supported by the collected data.