Factors Influencing the Active Engagement of Undergraduate EFL Students in Blended Learning: A Gender-Based Multigroup Analysis

Due to the rapid advancement of the Internet and technology, blended learning has gradually gained widespread acceptance among students, teachers, and educational institutions, emerging as the new norm in the post-pandemic era. This study aims to examine the factors influencing active engagement of undergraduate English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) students in blended learning and the moderating role of gender in these relationships. Self-Determination Theory and Technology Acceptance Model are the theoretical frameworks of this study. A total of 381 questionnaires were collected from six universities in Jiangxi Province. Data were analyzed by Smart-pls 4.0. The results indicate that except for perceived ease of use, perceived autonomy, perceived relatedness, perceived competence, and perceived usefulness were significant predictors of active engagement. Furthermore, the results of the multigroup analysis revealed that there were no significant gender differences in the effects of perceived autonomy, perceived relatedness, perceived competence, and perceived usefulness on active engagement. The details of the results and both theoretical and practical implications have been described in the paper.