Medical education environment perception and learning engagement in undergraduate nursing students: The mediating effect of self-regulated learning ability

Aim: To investigate the interrelationships of medical education environment perception, learning engagement and self-regulated learning ability among Chinese undergraduate nursing students. Background: After the outbreak of COVID-19, great changes have taken place in the medical education environment, many offline teaching and academic activities have been replaced by online activities. Students' learning engagement influences the efficiency of online learning. However, the mediating effect of self-regulated learning (SRL) ability between medical education environment perception and learning engagement is unclear. Design: This study involved a cross-sectional descriptive correlational research. Methods: A total of 228 undergraduatenursing students who were attending online learning were included in this study.This investigation adopted Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measure scale (DREEM), Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) and Utrecht Work Engagement Scale-Student scale (UWES-S) to respectively know about the levels of medical education environment perception, self-regulating and learning engagement. The structural equation model and bootstrap method were used to clarify the association and interaction among the three variables. Results: The scores of nursing students' medical education environment perception, SRL ability and learning engagement were 135.64 +/- 15.12, 161.39 +/- 22.57 and 68.01 +/- 11.77, respectively. Perception of medical education environment directly affects learning engagement (beta = 0.556, P < 0.001). SRL ability partially mediated the effect of medical environment perception on learning engagement (x2/df =1.427, RMSEA = 0.043, GFI = 0.962, NFI = 0.954, TLI = 0.980, CFI = 0.986), and the variance was 30.8 %. Conclusion: SRL ability plays a mediating role between medical education environment perception and learning engagement. Nursing educators should continuously optimize the online education environment, such as designing intelligent teaching platform or software, adopting interactive teaching methods, strengthening professional value education and encouraging peer learning, so as to meet the requirements of nursing students' learning engagement in the new medical education environment.