Comparative Study on Students’ Engagement and Academic Outcomes in Live Online Learning at University

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The overall manuscript contains relevant information for existing literature. One aspect that you can focus on is concise writing. Some sections are wordy, partly due to unnecessary repetition of information and informal writing. Focus more on academic alternatives. In addition, some information is redundant (it does not add anything relevant to your message). Furthermore, you need to be more precise with how you phrase certain things. The informal language makes your message vague and sometimes I do not know what you mean. The comma should be replaced by a period (you should apply this throughout your manuscript).

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your comprehensive review. Please, find responses to your comments in attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The quality of work is excellent. It has a correct theoretical argument. The methodology used is rigorous and uses the appropriate procedures and instruments.
The results are correctly presented and analyzed rigorously and thoroughly.
The discussion and the conclusions are very revealing and this research is very interesting for the scientific community.
It is true that it is limited to Russian students, but that is also interesting from a local point of view, and contextualized to a concrete reality.

Congratulations

Author Response

Thank you for your review!

Reviewer 3 Report

The present study relies on a quantitative methodological approach and offers interesting data for further discussion. At the same time, however, it is associated with several problems that need to be highlighted (I select the ten most important ones, others are marginal in comparison and will be structurally transformed):

1. The authors state (l. 296) that their research has practical implementations, but they do not say which ones.
2. The discussion of limitations (l. 301-305) is inadequate. It needs to be considered in light of the statement on l. 296, but also in light of the statistical procedures used.
3. I recommend that the gender breakdown be given for fields of study and degrees. The assumptions in the division shown in the text are unjustified.
4. The statement on l. 306 is unprovable and does not belong in a scientific manuscript. Science is not a matter of hope but argument.
5. The authors work with statistical procedures, but the specificity of the sample does not sufficiently justify their choice. I am not sure it makes sense to draw any statistical conclusions in general on a piece of about 300 students from a university in two disciplines.
6. There is no more detailed description of the fields studied, the experience of the students, etc. The results are mathematically unquestionable but challenging to interpret without this data.
7. Lack of discussion as a critical comparison with other research. Are the findings surprising and novel? In what aspect?
8. The timeliness and quality of the literature used are rather mediocre. I recommend updating the review given the review deadline.
9. On line 47, the authors state that this contributes to Russian literature. Is this the case? If so, there is no point in publishing it in an international journal. If they mean some specifics of the Russian educational system, they should be described. The statistical procedure seems methodologically transparent, but it is impossible to understand the meaning of the results or their connection to other aspects of human knowledge by not knowing the context.
10. I recommend using the IMRAD structure of the paper. Please follow the APA7 manual describing the chapter structure. While MDPI does not use APA, this does not mean that it will not help you structure the text more understandably. For example, the research limits cannot be in the Conclusion of such a paper.

The authors have unquestionably given the paper a lot of time and attention, but it still requires substantial refinement. In its current form, it is a research report for the needs of a particular university in Russia, not a paper that can contribute to scientific knowledge. At the same time, however, I believe that such improvements and additions are possible.

Author Response

Thank you for your comprehensive review. Please, find responses to your comments in attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

p.2.51-55: You need to place an "and" between "learning," and "investigates".

RQ 3: I would rephrase the information between brackets as a new RQ. I do not understand what you mean with "(differences between gender and education levels)". 

I see that you replaced virtual learning with e-learning. That is fine; however, I would highly recommend to inserting a footnote to explain the terminology. This displays you are aware of conceptual issues in the field. The decision to only use e-learning in the remainder of your work is fine. 

Inconsistencies still present in displaying p-values (e.g., compare abstract with page 6; comma vs. period). 

Author Response

Thank you! Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for the improvement. The quality and clarity of the manuscript have increased.

The discussion occurs only on lines 292-305, which are two paragraphs. The discussion section needs to be significantly strengthened to clarify the results. There are dozens of studies on similar topics that would form a suitable discussion framework (I list four, none of which I know the author, to avoid ethical conflict). The absence of a theoretical grasp of the study continues to be an obstacle to the publication of the submitted manuscript. I ask for a whole separate discussion section and recommend separating it from the conclusion, which summarises the content of the findings on lines 306-333.
Examples of studies possible (not necessary, the wide choice is, of course, up to the study authors - it is only illustrative examples) for the discussion section. Please work primarily with current sources (2019-present).:

Dunn, T. J., & Kennedy, M. (2019). Technology enhanced learning in higher education; motivations, engagement and academic achievement. Computers & Education, 137, 104-113.

Avcı, Ü., & Ergün, E. (2022). Online students’ LMS activities and their effect on engagement, information literacy and academic performance. Interactive Learning Environments, 30(1), 71-84.

Hewson, E. R. (2018). Students’ emotional engagement, motivation and behaviour over the life of an online course: Reflections on two market research case studies. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 1(10).

Muir, T., Milthorpe, N., Stone, C., Dyment, J., Freeman, E., & Hopwood, B. (2019). Chronicling engagement: Students’ experience of online learning over time. Distance Education, 40(2), 262-277.

Author Response

Thank you for your comment and sources, we used three of them and one found by ourselves to enhance the discussion!