The Influence of Learning with an Online, Personalized Environment on Students’ Attitudes, Beliefs, and Outcomes

This work details the ramifications of online learning using a novel, personalized learning system regarding high-school students’ experiences, attitudes, self-efficacy, and achievements during the 2020–2021 school year. Although research has explored the implications of remote and online learning on education worldwide, little attention was dedicated to high-school students’ experience with, and their inclination towards, learning with such systems. The research was conducted on high-school chemistry students in a mixed-method approach. We found a significant rise in students’ attitude towards the use of technology in chemistry classrooms, and their self-efficacy to learn chemistry using technology, whereas no significant change was found regarding students’ attitudes towards the personalization of chemistry and chemistry as a subject. Students who learned using the system’s personalization capabilities had a significant rise in their grades, compared with students who did not receive the full treatment. Qualitative analysis of students’ responses to open-ended questions revealed the changes in students’ experiences with the online, remote learning process, derived from their interfaces with the learning process, as they grew more accustomed to the system, understood it better, and saw its benefits to their chemistry learning. The reasons for the misalignment of the findings in this work, along with global trends in online learning are discussed, and future directions for research are proposed.