Dose local students’ presence affects remote students’ performance in blended synchronous learning?

This study investigated the effect of local students’ presence mode (intermittent presence vs. continuous presence) and level of content difficulty (easy vs. difficult) on remote students’ blended synchronous learning. A total of 124 fourth-grade remote students were randomly assigned to one of four groups. The results showed that, first, remote students had higher retention performance, higher perceived teacher interaction, and paid less attention to intermittently-present local students than they did to continuously-present local students. Second, content difficulty played a moderating role in the local students’ presence mode on remote students’ retention performance and engagement. Specifically, only for the difficult content condition, remote students had higher retention and engagement when local students were intermittently present than when they were continuously present. The results of this study have practical implications for the design of blended synchronous learning environments, especially when considering the use of local students’ presence to enhance remote student learning performance.