Do Academic Stress, Burnout and Problematic Internet Use Affect Perceived Learning? Evidence from India during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The study is relevant and will make a contribution to scholarship. However, there are some aspects that I believe need to be clarified before the manuscript can be published. I have made several notes throughout the paper itself, noting aspects that should be clarified, both in terms of writing and content. Please refer to the PDF in the annex.

Some of the more relevant aspects to be improved, are: 

• many references are used for the first time in the discussion section. They should have been used in the introduction, so they could later be mobilized in the discussion section.
•  Emergency Remote Teaching (and learning - ERT or ERTL) refers to the teaching practices that emerged during the pandemic, as is the case for the paper at hand. These were not planned practices and are not an adequate reflection of what could take place when students are faced with adequate distance learning. This distinction should be made clear. many papers have made this distinction before, including: 

  Hodges, C.; Moore, S.; Lockee, B.; Trust, T.; Bond, A. The Difference Between Emergency Remote Teaching and Online Learning Available online: https://bit.ly/3hx5amz 

  Bozkurt, A.; Sharma, R.C. Emergency Remote Teaching in a Time of Global Crisis Due to CoronaVirus Pandemic. Asian Journal of Distance Education 2020, 15, i–vi, doi:10.5281/zenodo.3778083. Several other papers, including some published by MDPI use the same distinction. 
• In the same line of thought, it is unclear what types of activities and online presence were asked of these students. A description of the types of activities promoted should be presented to contextualize the analysis, or, if that is impossible, that should be included in the study's limitations.
• The paper mostly refers to Problematic Internet Use (PIU). However, there are instances where Internet addiction is used. It seems that these two are distinct. Please uniformize or clarify. 
• The association between learning in a digital context and PIU seems unsubstantiated and can be hypothesized but not stated. I recommend authors clarify those passages. 
• a thorough revision of the paper is recommended. 
• Other aspects are remarked in the annex. 

Best regards

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Editor, Please find attached to Detailed reply. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Do Burnout and Problematic Internet Use Suppress the Beneficial Effect of Stress on Online Learning? Evidence from India during the Covid-19 pandemic

This submission studies the effect of stress, burnout, problematic Internet use and resilience on perceived learning by explicating the relationship between perceived stress and perceived learning, and multiple mediations of burnout, problematic Internet use and resilience on perceived online learning during the Covid-19 pandemic. The topic is interesting and of high significance. However, the authors need to address the following comments:

Title:

• The title is not clear and doesn’t reflect the main aim or the contribution of the study. What do you mean by “Beneficial Effect”?! The perceived learning which is the main concept to be measured and resilience are missing.

Abstract:

• The problem/gap is not clear. “Distress in the online classrooms and problematic internet use are two issues that many students face during the Covid-19 pandemic”, if the issues are distress and problematic Internet use, why the perceived learning is the main variable in this study? And why burnout and resilience are investigated.
• The main aim of study should be clearly stated in the abstract.

Introduction:

• The problem statement is not clear. Many concepts were introduced but not investigated in the current study (e.g., academic achievement, learning outcomes, internet addiction, anxiety, …). Why perceived learning is an issue?
• A conclusion of the main related studies should be reported to highlight the research gab.
• Critical statements should be supported from the literature. For example:
  • “If students lack digital competence and skills, an increase in academic stress levels and continuous pressure to be tech-savvy produces burnout in an online learning environment.”
  • “The student's perception of their learning has not been studied previously”! You should be specific. Many studies investigated the perceived learning form the student perspective.

Literature:

• It is not clear why Conservation of resource theory (CRT) and The Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model were introduced. How these theories contribute to the current study proposed model/hypotheses?
• “Since there are limited studies on perceived learning, the present paper has derived the hypotheses from the literature on academic achievement.” Perceived learning and academic achievement are totally different. You need to clearly justify why you used the studies of academic achievement to measure the perceived learning.
• It’s not clear why stress, burnout, problematic Internet use and resilience were selected to be investigated and the relationships in the proposed model were built.
• MBI-student survey scale should be clearly introduced, why it should be used in this study?
• There is a conflict between the problematic Internet use and Internet addiction. You should be consistent.

Method:

The measurements scale should be included.

Results: clear.

Discussion:

• There is a room of improvement by clearly link the results with the literature and discussing the results in the context of COVID 19 pandemic.

Language:

• The language is acceptable in terms of grammars. However, writing style lacks coherent flow and link between the sentences, ideas and paragraphs.

Author Response

Dear Editor, Please find attached to Detailed reply. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Study has a Potential  to be published. However, some technical issues must be Addressed : 

Your title has long question, as the second part of the question seems not clear or unfit. You may revisit title to be refined or adjusted.

Lines: 38- 41 needs to be (a) wrote in more clearer way (b) supported with relevant recently references you may cite articles from similar field of study e.g. :

Exploring the Impact of Transformation to Fully Online Learning during COVID-19 on Malaysian University Students’ Academic Life and Performance

Exploring the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on University Students’ Learning Life: An Integrated Conceptual Motivational Model for Sustainable and Healthy Online Learning

Or

Alternatively, any other related study.

Lines: 50- 54 these lines represent an example of many parts in the introduction section that has strong claiming statements but it has lack of supported references.  You may cite second article suggested above -relevant to mental health of students- or any other relevant article support your claim.

Lines: 75- 77 " The student's perception of their  learning has not been studied previously, whereas there are many studies on academic  achievement measured in terms of grades" this statement not matching logic and research reality, you may refine it and introduced it in a logical way.

Lines 19 & 193: You have claimed that your research use a cross-sectional "descriptive study"!   While me as a reader I can see different way in your work more towards A cross-sectional analytical relational study.

 Cross-sectional studies are usually observational in nature and known as descriptive research, not causal or relational, means cross-sectional studies can be used to describe characteristics that exist in a community, but not to determine cause-and-effect relationships between different variables. Therefore, you need to revisit right naming of your method with scientific methodical justification.

I can see from your LR you have theory base and variable to be tested so try to choose right name for your research method and approaches.  

Line 117: "MBI" this term suddenly appeared with no prior define; you may define it early of your study.  

Line 133: better to refer facts and results to the previous research work not to the "authors" as stated here (Several "authors"  have shown a negative association 133 between resilience and academic burnout)

It is advisable to label Hypothesis symbols and numbers in your research Structural Model to allow readers to have clear look between what is your literature review and what is your hypothesized model

Lines: 153 - 154 , 159 (grammatical/structure issues ) are you referring only to female students ? why the frequent use of ( her, she ) only !

Lines: 159- 161 (grammatical/structure issues) need to refine

Lines: 208 - 223 please attach your items questions as an appendix  

Line: 233 please explain further in few lines how and why you used snowball-sampling method collect the data.

Author Response

Dear Editor, Please find attached to Detailed reply. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Do Burnout, and Problematic Internet Use Suppress the Beneficial Effect of Stress on Online Learning? Evidence from India during the Covid-19 pandemic

The stress of learning in the peri-pandemic situation might affect learners' outcomes. The topic is of interest; however, the authors will need to conduct a revision in order to fulfil their objectives. My comments are as follows:

• Abstract: the abstract is opaque and should be more concise. The adopted methodology and the applications of the study could briefly be highlighted in the abstract.
• Introduction: The contributions of the study could be more coherently highlighted at the end of the introduction section. Also, many arguments in the introduction section are provided without anay reference (e.g., "…successful transformation to online 42 learning requires shifting the focus from teacher-centred learning to learner-centred co-43 operative pedagogy…"). The authors are recommended to support their arguments by the respective references.
• Literature review: It is very useful that the authors positioned a separate literature review section. It could also be more beneficial to provide a summary of the previous studies in a table. Also, what are the takeaways from such a long review section? How could this contextual literature contribute to the position of your study?
• Materials and Methods: The description of the SEM and relevant terms should be defined in the method section. Also, the recruitment process is not well defined? How did you select participants? Was there any financial reward for participation? How are the thresholds of Cronbach's coefficient alpha defined?
• The discussion of the paper could be framed more consistently, and the policy implications of the results could be discussed.
• Minor issue:
• Acronyms should be defined for the first time even common terms (e.g. ICT in line 39, introduction)
• More than one reference should be merged and shown in a single bracket (e.g. 27, 28)

Author Response

Dear Editor, Please find attached to Detailed reply. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I am pleased that the authors have made significant improvements to their article, and addressed my main concerns. 

Author Response

Figure 1 was missing due to a clerical mistake; we have revised the current draft and inserted Figure 1.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

In the new 2n reviewed version I have downloaded it seems Figure 1 is missing ! can you double check please 

Author Response

1. Title has been modified after observing certain lacunas in the frame and overall meaning.
2. Overall Article was reviewed and modified where it is needed.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf