The Antecedents of University Students’ E-Learning Outcome under the COVID-19 Pandemic: Multiple Mediation Structural Path Comparison

The COVID-19 pandemic in late 2019 has severely affected the education sector. In order to avoid clustering, higher education has begun to implement a large number of e-learning courses. Although modern technologies are relatively mature, learning outcomes do not entirely depend on advanced technologies. The purpose of this study is to explore how self-directed learning and the information literacy of university students affect their e-learning attitude, and to understand the variables that mediate their effects on the learning effectiveness. This is a survey research and a survey questionnaire was used to collect data. A total of 714 valid samples were retrieved. A confirmatory factor analysis was used to determine the reliability and validity of each variable, and the latent variable modeling was utilized to test the research hypotheses. The results showed that self-directed learning and information literacy had a significant positive impact on e-learning attitudes and learning effectiveness, and e-learning attitudes had a significant positive influence on the learning effectiveness. Through the structural model verification analysis, it was found that e-learning attitudes are the main intermediary mechanism among all of the variables. By comparing multiple intermediary variables, it was found that self-directed learning, as an independent variable, exerted indirect effects on the learning effectiveness through e-learning.