During the COVID-19 pandemic period, a growing number of learning activities are taking place in online contexts. Along with the adversity in the online course of target language learning, student engagement has been considered important to improve learners’ academic achievements of the target language. Although there has been a growing interest in the relationship between students’ perceived social support and their online learning engagement, the literature lacks an in-depth investigation of the intricate relations between these two constructs in an online English as a foreign language (EFL) learning setting during the pandemic. To address this gap, this study attempts to develop a model which depicts the relationships between students’ perceived social support and their online English learning engagement. A total of 615 university students in China were invited to take part in the study. By conducting structural equation modeling, the results confirmed the mediational model in which behavioral engagement completely mediated the relationships between social support (teacher support and peer support) and three other types of student engagement (cognitive, emotional and social engagement). These findings suggest designing effective instruction and developing support strategies in online teaching to enhance EFL learners’ engagement during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Due to the spread of the epidemic around the world, online learning has received greater attention. Self-regulated learning (SRL) is an important factor for students to achieve academic success. This study investigated the gender differences in SRL and three sub-constructs of SRL in the context of online learning, that is the preparatory, performance, and appraisal phases. A total of 400 high school students (males = 125, females = 275) from China participated in this study. In order to identify whether there were gender differences in their self-regulated online learning (SROL), independent sample t-test was performed. The results showed that there were significant gender differences in the SROL (t = –3.334, p = 0.001 < 0.01, d = –0.410) and the three sub-constructs of SROL (preparatory: t = –0.702, p = 0.008 < 0.01, d = 0.018; performance: t = –3.801, p = 0.000 < 0.01, d = 0.456; appraisal: t = –3.120, p = 0.002 < 0.01, d = 0.361). The findings indicated that females performed better than males in all three dimensions of learners’ online self-regulated learning.

Game-based learning supported by mobile intelligence technology has promoted the renewal of teaching and learning models. Herein, a model of Question-Observation-Doing-Explanation (QODE) based on smart phones was constructed and applied to science learning during school disruption in COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, from the theoretical perspective of cognitive-affective theory of learning with media, Bandura’s motivation theory and community of inquiry model, self-report measure was used to verify the effect of students’ scientific self-efficacy and cognitive anxiety on science engagement. A total of 357 valid questionnaires were used for structural equation model research. The results indicated that two types of scientific self-efficacy, as indicated by scientific learning ability and scientific learning behavior, were negatively associated with cognitive anxiety. In addition, cognitive anxiety was also negatively correlated to four types of science engagement, as indicated by cognitive engagement, emotional engagement, behavioral engagement, and social engagement through smartphone interactions. These findings provide further evidence for game-based learning promoted by smart phones, contributing to a deeper understanding of the associations between scientific self-efficacy, cognitive anxiety, and science engagement. This study points out that the QODE model is suitable for implementing smart mobile devices to students’ science learning.