The impact of Online and Offline Learning motivation on learning performance: the mediating role of positive academic emotion

Learning performance is an important indicator of online learning, is related to the quality of online education and the performance of students. Previous studies have found that learners’ learning performance is related to learning motivation and academic emotion, but the role of non-intellectual factors such as academic emotion has received less attention in empirical research. In order to make up for this gap, this study explored the mediating effect of positive academic emotions on college students’ online learning motivation and online learning performance, as well as the differences in mediating effects under different learning methods (i.e., online learning and offline learning). The data comes from 1088 college students who participate in online courses and offline courses in China. This study adopts correlation analysis and multiple mediation analysis to analyze the intermediary effect of online and offline students and multi-group comparisons. The results showed that the (1) online learning motivation is positively affecting online learning performance and positive academic emotions, and positive academic emotions are related to online learning performance. There is also a positive correlation between the dimensions of the three; (2) positive academic emotions part of the intermediary role between college students’ online learning motivation and online learning performance; (3) the intermediary effect of positive academic emotions in offline learning is significantly greater than that of online learning. This study is not only conducive to understanding academic emotions, learning motives and learning performance, but also provides important enlightenment online learning performance management in promoting open curriculum construction.