Switching to online learning during COVID-19: Theorizing the role of IT mindfulness and techno eustress for facilitating productivity and creativity in student learning

Highlights

• COVID-19 impacted switch to IT-mediated learning impacted students differently.

• Individual trait of IT mindfulness helped students cope with enhanced IT demands.

• IT mindfulness is positively related to productivity and creativity-in-learning.

• Techno eustress mediates the relationship between IT mindfulness and learning.

• Positive appraisals of technology use termed as techno eustress needs to be fostered.

Abstract

Online learning environments facilitate improved student learning by offering IT tools to enhance student productivity- and creativity-in-learning. COVID-19 impacted social-distancing measures forced an abrupt switch to online learning in most universities, putting immense pressure on the students to creatively adapt to new ways of online learning. Despite the purported positives of online learning, in the COVID-19 scenario, students reported mixed outcomes. While some students could adapt to the ‘new normal’, others struggled to adjust to the transformed IT-enabled learning scenario. Grounding our work in IT mindfulness literature, we posit that an IT-enabled learning environment may have differential impact on students’ productivity- and creativity-in-learning, depending on the extent of their IT mindfulness. Besides leveraging the mindfulness-to-meaning theory, we hypothesize the mediating role of techno eustress in the relationship between student IT mindfulness and learning effectiveness. We test the theorized model through data collected via a two-wave survey in a university student population exclusively using IT-enabled learning environments during the pandemic lockdown period. Results indicate that IT mindfulness has significant positive relationships with both productivity- and creativity-in- learning. Moreover, these relationships are mediated by the students’ techno eustress perceptions. Theoretical and practical implications arising from our study are also discussed.

Introduction

Lockdowns and social distancing restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic have forced educational institutions to shift their emphasis from traditional face-to-face learning modes to online learning environments. While some institutions have resorted to piecemeal IT solutions to maintain their academic continuity, others have switched to more advanced holistic online classroom environments, depending on their budgetary and technical constraints (Marinoni et al., 2020, Sidpra et al., 2020). However, similar to pandemic induced digital disruptions in other sectors, the transition to online instruction has been rather abrupt, with minimum IT end-user training or user perception evaluations (Blackburn et al., 2020, Marr, 2020). A UN report states that about 87.6% of enrolled learners have been affected by this change (United Nations, 2020). The sudden shift to online learning mode resulted in enhanced IT demands that may not necessarily be coped well by all the learners (Di Pietro et al., 2020, Watermeyer et al., 2020). In fact, a recent meta-analysis shows that reliance on digital learning environments is not always successful (Mehta, Chauhan, Gupta, & Jaiswal, 2021). Reports during the pandemic have highlighted issues such as learning loss, productivity loss, and emotional distress, often termed as ‘zoom fatigue’, among students all around the globe (Di Pietro et al., 2020, Fosslien and Duffy, 2020, Hvalshagen et al., 2021, Robinson, 2020, Upadhyaya and Vrinda, 2020). Such negative evidence goes against the strong narrative about the online learning environment as being an effective medium for teaching and learning (Hereward et al., 2020, Joosten et al., 2020, Srivastava et al., 2009, Toney et al., 2021). Although some prior research has reported mixed learning outcomes through IT-enabled tools (Ala-Mutka et al., 2008, Cladis, 2020, Gajda et al., 2017, Ngugi and Goosen, 2021, Sun et al., 2017, Swan, 2003, Toney et al., 2021, Zhang and Nunamaker, 2003), the current COVID-19 pandemic has precipitated the issue of online learning effectiveness. This certainly augments the need for a deeper learner-centric inquiry to understand the mechanisms through which learners can perceive IT enabled learning environments in a positive manner for holistic learning outcomes (Rogers, 2003).

Calls for more concerted research efforts have galvanized IS researchers to focus on several key concerns engulfing online learning during the current pandemic. Recent research on online learning has examined issues from several vantage points. While some research has taken the perspective of the teacher, teaching structure and teaching effectiveness (Abcouwer et al., 2021, Alqabbani et al., 2020, Boor and Cornelisse, 2021; Carter Jr, Rice, Yang, & Jackson, 2020; Prinsloo & Singh, 2021), others have examined the institutional resources, policies, and IT tool adoption (Barnes, 2020, Favale et al., 2020, Hvalshagen et al., 2021, Iyer and Chapman, 2021, Li et al., 2021, Lumor et al., 2020, Mavengere et al., 2021, Xie and Siau, 2020). Notwithstanding the significance of such pandemic-related online learning issues, we recognize the need for individually-driven learnability as the key for effective online learning not only during the ongoing pandemic times but also during normal times (Hwang et al., 2000, Mehta et al., 2021). However, because of the enhanced use of online learning tools during the current pandemic period, there is no doubt that there is a greater need for more learner-centric responsibility for effective learning. All students may not uniformly perceive this increased responsibility of the learner as desirable. During the current pandemic, learners are experiencing a non-conducive emotional state to focus on learning, which can also impact their self-directed learning process (Carter et al., 2020, Mosanya, 2020, Xie and Siau, 2020). A call for a deeper learner-centric inquiry based on the individual differences of the learners is expected to shed light on the mechanisms through which learners can perceive IT-enabled learning environments in a positive manner for holistic learning outcomes (Boor and Cornelisse, 2021, Carter et al., 2020, Rogers, 2003).

We believe that research probing into IT-enabled learning is specifically meaningful during the current pandemic situation that has forced students to abruptly switch to digital means for continued learning (Favale et al., 2020, Pirson, 2020). IT-enabled learning outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic closely relate to the effective use of online learning by students in the transformed academic environment, which in considerable measure depends on the learners’ resilience to cope with this sudden technological shift (Barnes, 2020, Burton-Jones and Volkoff, 2017, Ivanišin, 2009). We posit that such resilience is shaped by the learners’ perceptions about technology use, which are expected to influence their appraisals of technology-mediated learning (Boh et al., 2020, Wilkins, 2020). Taking a contextualized bottom-up approach to examine the individual-level factors impacting student online learning perceptions will address the calls for research in this direction (Boh et al., 2020, John and Gross, 2007). Hence, it becomes theoretically and practically interesting to examine the individual-level factors that can explain how students cope with the sudden increase in IT demands for learning during the COVID-19 lockdown period. A clearer understanding of such individual-level factors would help design pathways to encourage positive student appraisals of online learning environments, thereby contributing to the effective use of available IT tools for student learning (Panigrahi et al., 2018, Shirish et al., 2019).

Prior research on online learning has primarily taken a task-centered rather than an individual-centered perspective (Ivanišin, 2009). However, online learning lays the foundation for the learner’s holistic development that encapsulates not only the competencies achieved through task-conscious directed learning, i.e. productivity-in-learning (PIL) but also the improvisations attained in the ensuing learning process termed as creativity-in-learning (Hereward et al., 2020, Van Laar et al., 2017, Voogt et al., 2013). Hence, we posit that besides task-conscious learning outcomes contributing to productivity in learning, IT-enabled environments facilitate students to exercise their creativity by developing new and personally meaningful learning ideas and insights within the context of their specific academic constraints (Beghetto and Kaufman, 2007, Beghetto, 2007). Hence, in our study, we examine the two outcomes of learning effectiveness. First, productivity-in-learning (PIL) is the possibility of using IT to deliver efficient and better-quality academic output. Second, creativity-in-learning is the possibility of using available IT creatively for learning activities within the given academic constraints. We believe that both PIL and CIL are essential to understand the effectiveness of IT-enabled learning.

We integrate the aforementioned view on learning effectiveness with the need to incorporate individual-level factors that can contribute to effective IT use in the context of the ongoing pandemic and beyond. Specifically, we leverage the emerging concept of “IT mindfulness” that can help users extract value from their IT use (Roberts, Thatcher, & Klien, 2007). IT mindfulness is an IT-specific individual-level trait, noticeable when IT users tend to focus on the present, pay attention to the operational details, and display interest to investigate IT features with an overall goal to improve their functioning (Thatcher, Wright, Sun, Zagenczyk, & Klein, 2018). However, the role of IT mindfulness in the context of enhanced IT demands, both in the education and the business scenarios, is still not well understood (Hickman, 2020). Our study thus contributes to the literature that examines individual-level IT competencies, which can impact functioning in virtual learning environments (Mosanya, 2020, Panigrahi et al., 2018, Shirish et al., 2019, Wang and Haggerty, 2011). Recent research on the subject highlights the need to examine the role of IT mindfulness as an individual-level student trait for better understanding learner adaptation to technology-mediated learning environments by coping with the related technostress perceptions (Connolly & Rush, 2019). This leads us to our first research question:

# RQ1 – Is there a relationship between the online learners’ IT mindfulness and IT-mediated learning effectiveness?

To unearth the mechanisms through which IT mindfulness influences IT-mediated learning effectiveness, we leverage recent research on “techno eustress” to examine the role of positive technology use appraisals (Califf et al., 2020, Chandra et al., 2019, Shirish, 2021). In contrast to technostress, techno eustress is the individual’s appraisal of IT demands as a “challenge” rather than as a “hindrance” for attaining the intended technology use objectives (Srivastava et al., 2015, Tarafdar et al., 2019, Zhao et al., 2009). Grounding our theorization in the “mindfulness to meaning theory” (MMT), we seek to explain the cognitive regulation process among students confronted with enhanced IT demands for learning during the COVID-19 pandemic (Garland et al., 2015, Garland et al., 2017). MMT explicates the cognitive processes through which the mindfulness trait (dynamic and secondary trait) among individuals faced with novel IT demands facilitates decentering and reappraisal leading to an improved well-being perception (eustress perceptions) through effective coping of the stressful situation (Garland et al., 2015). Prior research shows that traits are considered antecedents to appraisals and coping (Kim et al., 2016, Penley and Tomaka, 2002). Individual trait difference can influence eustress perceptions and their consequent evaluations (Saksvik & Hetland, 2011). Therefore, online learners’ IT mindfulness, a dynamic trait, is expected to regulate the learner’s appraisals causing them to evaluate IT demands as techno eustress, influencing their learning effectiveness. This leads us to our second research question:

# RQ2 –Do positive appraisals of technology use mediate the relationship between the online learners’ IT mindfulness and their learning effectiveness?

To study the phenomenon of IT mindfulness and its influence on student learning in the context of a technology-mediated learning environment, we conducted a two-wave longitudinal survey amongst respondents in an educational setting during the COVID-19 pandemic induced lockdown. The responding students had to transition to online instruction rather abruptly at the start of the pandemic lockdown. The two-wave survey ensured a temporal separation between the independent and dependent variables, eliminating the possibility of method bias. Results indicate that IT mindfulness has a positive influence on both —productivity-in-learning and creativity-in-learning. Further, we also found that the positive appraisals of technology use (techno eustress) mediate these relationships, thereby providing a modest validation of the proposed IT mindfulness to meaning theory. The results from our research exhort educators to take into consideration the important individual-level trait of IT mindfulness in designing their technology-mediated instruction process. For students high on IT mindfulness trait, the switch to online learning seems to be relatively easy. Hence, directed efforts need to be made to identify and train the vulnerable students for enhancing their IT mindfulness to enhance their IT-enabled learning effectiveness.