Student Comfort and Well-being Emerge as Influencers of Virtual Classroom Engagement

Student acceptance and voluntary use of virtual classrooms such as Zoom is influenced by various latent factors which can be managed to improve student engagement, and their effects measured by technology acceptance models (TAMs). This study sought to identify factors not currently accounted for in educational TAM research relating to virtual classroom use. To achieve this, we invited 742 students at a major Australian university to respond to four open questions on their attitudes towards using Zoom for learning. Thematic analysis was conducted on 169 valid responses. Themes were mostly aligned with known factors from a published taxonomy of important factors. However, health and well-being, and social comfort, emerged as two new factors affecting student intentions to use Zoom for learning. The findings suggest that these two new constructs influence student voluntary use of virtual classrooms such as Zoom.