Examining Users' Sustained Attention to Online Learning by Modifying a UTAUT Model of Rain Classroom

Introduction

The new era has witnessed the significant advancement of information technology, which has brought great changes to every aspect of human social life and prompted much more advanced technological innovations. Take the educational field as an example. The creation of digital learning technologies to facilitate better learning and teaching is gaining popularity. One of the most significant advantages of digital learning technologies is to reduce the temporal and spatial limitations that are obvious of the traditional way of learning, especially in such a particular time of the outbreak of COVID-19 when teachers and students are trapped at home, and teaching and learning in a physical classroom are impossible. Educational systems worldwide are beginning to seek new ways of carrying out teaching activities, which has led to the global adoption of online learning systems. These digital learning technologies have played a vital role in teaching practice during the ongoing pandemic “lockdown” (Watermeyer et al., 2021).

Among the various digital learning technologies, Rain Classroom, designed by one of the most distinguished universities of China, tries to incorporate innovative technologies into teaching processes and provides technological support for before-class preview, in-class activities, and after-class review (Wang, 2017). Students have easy access to Rain Classroom. All they need to do is to scan the QR code or input the classroom code presented on the projection screen through WeChat, the most popular communicative tool in China.

Before class, students can preview different kinds of teaching and learning materials that their teachers have uploaded to form pre-class schemata, such as voices, videos, pictures, or related documents. During class, with the help of some special functions provided by Rain Classroom, such as random roll call, barrage, and in-class test, teachers can design various in-class activities and get students actively involved in the class, which will not only help improve the teaching and learning efficiency but also improve the interaction between teachers and students. Teachers can send different exercises to students, such as multiple choices, polling, blank filling, and subjective questions, and explain some difficult points according to students’ accuracy. Rain Classroom also provides teachers with functions to get students’ mastery of the explained knowledge in class. If students feel hard to understand some knowledge points, they can click the “Do not understand” button in the related courseware, and teachers can adjust their teaching pace based on students’ feedback. After class, students can review the class materials anytime and anywhere. Furthermore, if they meet complex problems, they can also discuss with their peers and teachers through this platform.

Although Rain Classroom gains excellent popularity among domestic researchers and educators, compared with similar online learning platforms abroad, it is not as that prevailing as Zoom and Google Meet (Camilleri & Camilleri, 2021; Ranjan et al., 2021; Zaiarna, 2021) in the world. Since researchers have acknowledged its advantages and effectiveness from different aspects, Rain Classroom must promote itself to a larger platform to provide more researchers at home and abroad with realistic and practical teaching plans, especially at the current stage of the epidemic. Thus, knowing the factors behind users’ adoption is vital for the future development of Rain Classroom.

However, when retrieving the literature, only a few studies focus on predicting users’ intention to adopt and use Rain Classroom (Yu & Yu, 2020). In contrast, studies investigating the technology adoption models of similar platforms like MOOCs (Alyoussef, 2021), Google Meet (Al-Maroof et al., 2021), Microsoft Teams (Pal & Vanijja, 2020), Zoom (Alfadda & Mahdi, 2021), GoToMeeting and WebEx (Jain & Jain, 2021) are popular among researchers. What is still limited in the current literature of Rain Classroom is the understanding of users’ intention not only to adopt it but, more importantly, the factors influencing their sustained attention to this software. Chen and Wang (2018) have shown a significant and robust correlation between learners’ sustained attention and learning performance. On the other hand, uncovering the factors that may influence users’ sustained attention to Rain Classroom is not only beneficial for teachers to improve students’ learning efficiency but, more importantly, for technology developers to enhance the further development of Rain Classroom. Therefore, it is necessary to determine the factors that influence Rain Classroom users’ sustained attention.