Antecedents and Mediators of Academic Satisfaction in Virtual Vocational Training

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors and Editor,

After reading and analyzing the article “Antecedents and Mediators of Academic Satisfaction in Virtual Vocational Training”, I make some observations:

- the topic is interesting, because in recent years, since the pandemic period, the use of virtual media in education has grown a lot;

- the Summary is well constructed and meets what is expected for this item;

- the Introduction is structured differently, as it already presents the contextualization, objectives, hypotheses and theoretical basis; is divided into topics. But it is elaborated clearly and makes it possible to understand the subject;

- the Materials and Methods are well organized and present the necessary data to understand how the research was developed. Just keep asking me a little about the fact that sampling is for convenience, I know the difficulty of doing it randomly, but it also seems to compromise the results and statistical calculations applied a little;

- the Results are presented in a very objective way;

- the Discussions are based on theoretical references, which supports the discussions, however I felt there was a lack of more up-to-date references on the topic, there are only 2 articles from 2022 and none from 2023; Also in this topic, Limitations and Implications are presented;

- in the Conclusions there is a formatting problem, there is a period at the beginning of the sentence; simple, I think it could have been explored more by the authors; even though the objectives were answered in the Discussions.

Yours sincerely.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We appreciate your comments to improve this article. In the following table, you can check the changes made to the article, as well as other responses to your comments. In the article document, the changes introduced are highlighted in yellow.

Best regards.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

General issues:

The authors define the purpose of the study:

Objective 1. To assess the perceived usability by students within the virtual environment of D-VET in Andalusia [lines: 126-127].

The authors define the following hypotheses:

H1: The degree of usability of the virtual environment will have a direct and positive effect on students' academic satisfaction [lines: 137-138]

H2: The degree of teacher availability and support will have a direct and positive effect on students' academic satisfaction [lines: 139-140].

H3a and H3b: LMS usability and teacher availability will have a positive effect on academic engagement, and academic engagement will have a positive effect on academic satisfaction [lines: 168-169].

H4a and H4b: LMS usability and teacher availability will have a negative effect on academic burnout, and academic burnout will have a negative effect on academic satisfaction [lines: 170-171].

H5: Academic engagement and academic burnout will mediate the relationship between LMS usability and academic satisfaction and between teacher availability and academic satisfaction (Figure 1) [lines: 172-174].

H6: Perceived obstacles of VET students predict levels of burnout and academic engagement [line 199].

In order to determine the sample, a convenience sample was used, the criterion of which was that the participants were of legal age and that they were studying higher vocational training in Andalusia at the time of completing the questionnaire [lines: 205-207]. The sample included 208 students [line:214]. To measure usability, SUS-A (the System Usability Scale-A) was used [line: 226]. Teacher behavior and availability was measured using the Teacher Support Scale 240 of the Distance Education Learning Environments Survey (DELES) [lines: 240-241]. Academic engagement was measured using The Academic Engagement Scale [lines: 250-251]. The Maslach Burnout Inventory was used to measure burnout [lines: 263-264]. Academic satisfaction was measured using the Academic Satisfaction Scale [line 273]. A stepwise multiple linear 298 regression analysis was carried out, eliminating non-significant predictor variables from 299 the model. Collinearity diagnostics were also performed [lines: 298-300].

Detailed issues:

Lines 126-127: why was the purpose of study 1 stated? Is there any other purpose?

Line 151: no gap after e-learning.

Line 183: remove triplet, maybe better replace etc.

Line 198: incorrect hypothesis marking - it should be 6.

Lines 201-202: wouldn't it be better to split figure 1 into two separate figures so that specific models can be referenced?

Line 220: Previously, only 1 target was specified, so why are targets indicated as if there were more of them.

Line 306: no space after dot.

Line 341: Incorrect table numbering. I think it should be table 6, not 7.

Lines 341-342: The table caption style should be improved, previously italics were used for table captions.

Line 344: Incorrect table numbering.

Line 379: Invalid table numbering.

Line 383: Incorrect table numbering.

Line 444: Change H3B to H3b.

Line 547: Remove period at beginning of paragraph.

Summary:

It would be worth outlining the problem in the initial part of the article, and then moving on to the conditions and presenting the current situation. In the introduction, the author defines the purpose of the study, marking it as goal 1, which would suggest a larger number of goals, but he does not define them. The authors use a fairly small research sample that included people from a small area. A certain advantage here is the use of the Bootstrap method. It seems that the work could contain more conclusions and thoughts of the authors' own. The "Conclusion" chapter needs to be expanded. Editorial corrections should also be made.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We appreciate your comments to improve this article. In the following table, you can check the changes made to the article, as well as other responses to your comments. In the article document, the changes introduced are highlighted in yellow.

Best regards.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This study investigated the Antecedents and Mediators of Academic Satisfaction in Virtual Vocational Training. 

The findings are interesting, consistent with the current understanding of the role that certain variables play in the well-being of students and that, in turn, influence the quality of teaching. 

Nevertheless, I have some comments and concerns, listed below: 

Major comments

Lines 53-56: “In Spain, as shown in table 1, the number of students enrolled in distance vocational 53 education and training (D-VET) has increased by 48.2% between the academic year 54 2010-2011 and the academic year 2021-2022, and even more in the region of Andalusia, 55 where there has been a percentage increase of 301.14%.”

If the authors have the information, it would be interesting to note why the increase in D-VET is so high in Andalusia. 

Minor comments (comments on the whole manuscript)

-       Line 68: “Vocational Education and Training (VET)” 

The acronym has already been defined. The authors could use VET.

-       Lines 70 and 74: the titles of tables 1 and 2 should be written above the tables. Moreover, all the titles should be written in italics.

-       Line 74 : “Table 2” should be written in bold.

-       Line 150: “e-learning[6,8,31]." A space is missing before the bracket. 

ð "e-learning [6,8,31]." 

-       Line 200: Figure 1: The authors should strike a better balance between figure frames and word fonts. Moreover, they could note figure 1a and figure 1b.

-       Line 216: “65.4%”: A sentence cannot begin with a Roman numeral. The authors should reword the sentence to move 65.4%. The same applies to line 316 (82.2%).

-       Line 548: The period at the beginning of the sentence should be removed.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We appreciate your comments to improve this article. In the following table, you can check the changes made to the article, as well as other responses to your comments. In the article document, the changes introduced are highlighted in yellow.

Best regards.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx