Pre-Service Teachers’ Perceptions of Emotions and Self-Regulatory Learning in Emergency Remote Learning

This study explored emotions and self-regulatory learning in postgraduate students, forced to transition to emergency remote teaching, at a Hong Kong university after the start of the academic semester. Self-regulation is a critical factor for successful online learning, and emotions are important antecedents of self-regulated learning. The study adopted a two-phase research design, with an initial online questionnaire (n = 52) followed by semi-structured interviews (n = 16) to gain a rich and holistic understanding of students’ experiences. Our findings indicate that: (1) locating a suitable location to attend online classes and sharing problems with classmates were the two most frequently self-regulatory learning strategies employed by students; (2) students experienced some enjoyment attending online classes but experienced increased pressure and time commitment to complete assigned work; (3) students found online learning to lack a sense of community, making it challenging to interact with classmates. The findings suggest teachers need to incorporate various synchronous and asynchronous collaborative activities, and they need to increase their own and students’ presence online to motivate and facilitate effective teaching and learning.