The Mediating Role of Student’s Curiosity and Anxiety in the Relationship between Student Attitude and Academic Achievement in Electronic Learning

The individual differences of the students are important issues that focus on both traditional education and distance education. One of these differences is affective characteristics. Lack of a physical classroom environment and the distribution of lessons through information and communication technologies may cause students to react differently to e-learning. In this context, different demands and expectations of students can occur. Various reactions such as interest, attitude, desire, expectation, curiosity, academic self-concept, motivation, self-efficacy, excitement and anxiety towards the system, program, lesson and related materials which used in e-learning can be expressed as the affective characteristics of students. The affective reactions of the students are a major obstacle in learning. Teachers have an important role in helping students know their own curiosity and anxiety towards e-learning, and teachers to guide students on this issue and develop an affective strategy for their negative situations. It can be stated that a mistake or deficiency that may occur in the process will disrupt the ecosystem, considering a process where many factors coexist and interact with each other and affect them positively and negatively in the e-learning process. It is very important that students acquire positive emotional behaviors in order to realize easy and permanent learning and to achieve success in e-learning. With the delivery of courses via electronic devices, the students react emotionally towards e-learning such as as interest, attitude, expectation, curiosity, excitement, anxiety, academic self-concept and self-efficacy. The delivery of courses through electronic tools without the physical classroom environment of teachers and students brings with them problems such as communication and interaction, distance and community feeling, timely support and feedback, and support of students with pre-learning in inadequate subjects. It is very important to design methods, programs, courses and materials according to these characteristics based on student affective characteristics in order to achieve permanent learning and academic achievement. The aim of this study is to investigate the mediating effect of student curiosity and anxiety on the relationship between student attitude and academic achievement in electronic learning. The study was carried out with 756 associate, undergraduate and post-graduate students who took courses with e-learning. With the help of the model formed within the scope of the study, mediator relations of the students curiosity and anxieties between student’ attitude and achievement were revealed. The findings of the study show that the students curiosity and anxiety towards e-learning mediate to relation between student attitudes and academic achievement