Investigation of the role of emotions experienced in distance education environments in the learning process

The aim of this study to develop and test a model the effect of student emotions on student engagement, the mediator effect of online learning readiness and the moderator effect of metacognition in distance education environments. The study group of this study consists of 1601 students studying at a state university in Turkey. Data were collected through "emotions experienced in distance education scale", "student's engagement scale", "online learning readiness scale", "metacognitions questionnaire-30". The mediation and moderated mediation models were analyzed with SPSS PROCESS macro 3.4. It was revealed that the students experienced boredom the most in the activities they did not actively participate in, and interest and curiosity in the activities they actively participated in. Results indicated that online readiness mediated the relationship between emotions and student engagement in three models. Metacognition moderated the positive emotions and negative emotions model but did not moderate exploratory emotions model. While 56% of the total variance was explained in the positive emotions and exploratory emotions models, 57% of the total variance was explained in the negative emotions model. It can be suggested to develop strategies to ensure that students experience positive emotions, taking into account their online learning readiness and metacognition, in order to ensure students' engagement in online learning environments.