Synchronous online learning during movement control order in higher education institutions: a systematic review

Background: Higher education institutions (HEI) are not spared from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The closure of campuses because of the movement control order (MCO) to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 has forced HEIs to adopt online learning, especially synchronous online learning (SOL). Although teaching and learning can be continued via SOL, retaining students’ interest and sustaining their engagement have not been sufficiently explored. This study presents a systematic review of the research pertaining to SOL associated with students’ interest and engagement in HEIs during the MCO environment. Methods: Five major online databases, i.e., EBSCOhost, Science Direct, Emerald, Scopus and Springer were searched to collect relevant papers published between 1st January 2010 to 15th June 2021 including conference proceedings, peer-reviewed papers and dissertations. Papers written in the English language, based in full-fledged universities, and with these five keywords: (i) synchronous online learning, (ii) engagement, (iii) interest, (iv) MCO/Covid-19 and (v) HEI, were included. Papers focussing on synchronous and asynchronous online learning in schools and colleges were excluded. Each paper was reviewed by two reviewers in order to confirm the eligibility based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results: We found 31 papers of which six papers were related to SOL, engagement and interest in HEIs in the MCO environment. Our review presents three major findings: (i) limited research has been conducted on SOL associated with students’ engagement and interest, (ii) studies related to the context of HEIs in the MCO environment are limited, and (iii) the understanding of the new phenomena through qualitative research is insufficient. We highlight the SOL alignment with students’ engagement, interest, style preference, learner interaction effectiveness, behavior and academic performance. Conclusions: We believe that the findings of this study are timely and require attention from the research community.


Introduction
The Malaysian online learning movement started in the 1990s with the objective of providing learners access to quality education and lifelong learning opportunity. 1 Despite the growing online learning trend, physical learning remains the mainstream learning mode for full-time undergraduate students because most of the Malaysian universities' infrastructures, facilities and program structures are built for physical teaching and learning. 2 However, the eruption of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID- 19) pandemic in 2019 changed this norm. The enforcement of movement control order (MCO) in Malaysia has pushed universities towards online learning. Therefore, synchronous online learning (SOL) has been adopted as a temporary solution in the time of the pandemic to ensure the continuity of academic activities. Even though literature abounds regarding online learning for adult learners in the normal environment, synchronous online learning (SOL) for undergraduate students during the COVID-19 pandemic is a new phenomenon that warrants the attention of research community. Therefore, a systematic literature reviews will help the researchers to identify the research gaps in this new environment.

Synchronous online learning (SOL)
SOL is a form of online learning where teaching and learning occur simultaneously and at the same place. 3 In SOL, students and instructors can login remotely from any location in the world and concurrently participate in the learning process. 4,5 The advancement of online learning technologies, such as audio, video, and text, has allowed instant feedback and real-time interaction between students, instructors and fellow students. [6][7][8][9][10][11] These features of SOL that resemble physical learning are well accepted by students. 12,13 Despite the benefits of live session, immediacy and real-time guidance and feedback, SOL has its limitations. 6,14,15 For instance, technical difficulties, availability of electronic devices, internet connection, interface and bandwidth and students' interest and engagement are issues related to SOL in higher education institutions (HEIs) in the MCO environment. 16 Engagement Engagement is referred to as the interaction between the time, effort and relevant resources invested to optimize student's experience, learning outcomes and performance. 17 Engagement is also related to student's attitudes towards the learning process and psychological involvement in the learning activities to attain positive learning outcomes, such as satisfaction, achievement and performance. 18,19 Behavioral, cognitive and emotional engagement are the three main engagement components. 20 Behavioral engagement requires students to comply with the behavioral norms, where students do not demonstrate disruptive or negative behavior. Students with positive behavioral engagement will attend classes and participate enthusiastically in the learning process. Next, students with emotional engagement demonstrate interest and enjoyment in the learning process. Lastly, students with cognitive engagement will go the extra mile in the learning process to perform beyond expectation.

Interest
Interest is the underlying psychological factor of being engaged or engrossed in an activity and a guiding factor in energising learning and academic performance. 21,22 Next, continuing interest requires students to endure and reengage in the learning activities over time. 23 Therefore, educational activities that meet individual students' needs can catch students' attention, such as by varying the novelty, complexity and incongruity of visual stimuli. 21,22,24 Nevertheless, the heterogeneity of individual interest and the large class size have made these tasks challenging. 25 Hence, creating situational interest in the learning process is the first step in developing students' individual interest 26,27 because students with a positive individual interest are highly engaged and attentive to achieve good academic performance as individual interest is a psychological behavior of positive affect and persistency in the learning process. 28,29 When students' individual interest matches the specific contextual affordances, students will be focused and enjoy learning. A study suggests that interest will develop into a self-sustained and well-developed interest with the passage of time. 21

REVISED Amendments from Version 1
Based on the recommendations of reviewers, I have made the following changes in the text of manuscript: I have included a column of country-wise analysis for all the 31 identified papers in Table 5 as it will give an idea as to which continent had contributed to the similar area of research and would also pave the way to increase the scope of the research. Secondly, I have strengthened the manuscript by providing the limitation of terminologies used in the online database search process. The inclusion of this limitation in the enhanced manuscript will be helpful for the future research. Thirdly, I have strengthened the discussion on the limitations based on the identified 31 research papers. This will enhance the quality of research gaps discussion. Lastly, I have included the discussion of theoretical and practical implications of this research in the sections of findings and conclusion.
Any further responses from the reviewers can be found at the end of the article Given this backdrop, the three research questions for this study are as follows: 1. Do research gaps in SOL pertaining to students' engagement and interest in HEIs in the MCO environment exist?
2. What are the limitations in the current research within SOL in HEIs in the MCO environment?
3. What is the conceptual framework for SOL pertaining to students' engagement and interest in HEIs in the MCO environment?
The objectives of this proposal are as follows: 1. To identify research gaps in SOL pertaining to students' engagement and interest in HEIs in the MCO environment.
2. To understand the limitations of the current research within SOL in HEIs in the MCO environment.
3. To develop a conceptual framework for SOL pertaining to students' engagement and interest in HEIs in the MCO environment.

Institutional review board statement
This study was approved by the Research Ethical Committee (REC) of Multimedia University (EA2742021).

Study design
This paper was designed to present a literature review, a research gap analysis and insights into SOL pertaining to undergraduate students' engagement and interest in HEIs in the MCO environment. The five stages of literature review proposed by 30 were used in this process: Stage 1: Planning the review  This review is reported in line with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) reporting guidelines. 62 Stage 1. Planning the review The main purpose of this review is to identify research gaps in terms of theories, factors, methods and processes pertaining to SOL and the engagement and interest elements in HEIs in the MCO environment.

Stage 2. Identifying and evaluating studies
The main focus of this study is SOL. Therefore, papers on asynchronous learning were excluded in the selection and evaluation process. Nevertheless, the identification and evaluation were hampered because not all the papers used the term synchronous and asynchronous explicitly.

Selection process
Five major online databases, namely EBSCOhost, Science Direct, Emerald, Scopus and Springer were searched to collect relevant papers published between 1 st January 2010 to 15 th June 2021 including conference proceedings, peer-reviewed papers and dissertations. Papers written in the English language and based in full-fledged universities with these five keywords: (i) synchronous online learning, (ii) engagement, (iii) interest, (iv) MCO/COVID-19 and (v) HEI, were included in the selection process. Papers that focused on synchronous and asynchronous online learning in schools and colleges were excluded. The limitation of this selection process strategy is that other terminologies used for online learning such as hybrid-classroom, flipped-classroom, distance learning, E-learning, Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) and etc. were excluded. Similarly, terms such as lockdown, circuit-breaker and etc. were not included in the search process. Figure 1 presents the paper selection process. Next, each paper was reviewed by two reviewers collectively in order to confirm the eligibility based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Search strategy
The search strategy was to sift through papers that discuss SOL pertaining to students' engagement and interest in the time of MCO using the combination of keywords (Table 1). However, the search strategy that based on the five identified keywords in the selection process may lead to publication bias risk. Therefore, future researchers may expand the selection of keywords in order to reduce the risk of missing some relevant articles.

Stage 3. Extracting and synthesising data
In this extraction process, only conceptual and empirical papers associated with SOL, engagement and interest in HEIs under MCO were selected for synthesis. Further, data on theories, methods, factors and limitations of the selected papers were reviewed and evaluated. Table 2 presents the focus areas in extracting and synthesising data from the selected papers. Figure 2 presents the papers extraction process.
The Transfield stages 4 and 5 are presented in the following sections. Table 3 presents the online databases search result. A total of 21,431 papers are listed as "synchronous online learning". The number dropped to 4,970 (23%) after adding the word "engagement" and dropped further to 2,020 (9.4%) after adding the word "interest".

Reporting descriptive findings
We examined 31 papers. However, as shown in Table 4, only six out of the 31 papers are associated with SOL in HEI in the MCO environment. Further, only two out of these six papers are related to engagement, and no paper is related to the interest element. Table 5 summarizes the theories, methods and factors used in these 31 papers. Only 8 papers (26%) used qualitative methods, 8 papers (26%) are associated with SOL, 5 papers (16%) are related to engagement, no paper (0%) is related to interest, 11 papers (35%) are related to HEI and 19 papers (61%) are related to MCO. However, only 2 papers (6%) were associated to SOL, engagement, HEI and MCO. Therefore, the research in the area of student's engagement and interest, particularly that associated with SOL in HEI in the MCO environment. Table 6 presents the plotting of 31 papers to engagement, interest, synchronous online learning (SOL), movement control order (MCO) and higher education institutions (HEIs). Table 5 and Table 6 show that, student's engagement and interest associated with SOL in HEIs in the MCO environment is insufficiently researched. The online databases search results in Figure 3 also shows that only two papers are relevant to our research. Table 7 presents the summary of the six papers related to synchronous online learning (SOL) in higher education institutions (HEIs) in the movement control order (MCO) environment.

Discussion
Based on the above summary, research in the areas of undergraduate students' engagement and interest in synchronous online learning during movement control order warrant further investigation. In-depth research into these areas will help the research community to offer practical solutions to synchronous online learning during MCO for undergraduate students who are used to physical face-to-face learning to increase learning effectiveness during the time of a crisis, such as a Coronavirus pandemic crisis. Next, this research will also bridge the theoretical gap where new or enhanced conceptual framework can be introduced.

Research gaps
Three major research gaps were identified:

Research gap 1: SOL in HEI during MCO context
Only six papers [31][32][33][34][35][36] are related to HEI in the MCO environment. Therefore, this new phenomenon warrants further investigation by the research community.

Research gap 2: Engagement and interest elements
Only two papers 31,32 related to engagement are associated with SOL in the MCO environment. The study on SOL associated with engagement and interest is clearly insufficient. Moreover, Paper 1 31 focused only on students' cognitive engagement, such as attitude, affect, and motivation, whereas Paper 2 32 focused on accounting lecturers' reflection  regarding students' engagement during synchronous and asynchronous online classes. Engagement can be categorized into cognitive, behavioral and emotional engagement. 20 A holistic view on students' engagement should include these three dimensions. Next, students' interest in learning via SOL will affect the quality of engagement. Nevertheless, interest as a factor associated with SOL in HEI in the MCO environment has not been researched intensively. Therefore, the inclusion of interest warrants the attention of the research community.

Research gap 3: Method
In total, seven qualitative research methods were identified from the 31 papers. Only one paper used case study method. SOL in HEIs in the MCO environment is a new phenomenon that may require a more in-depth investigation method, such as a case study method to gain better insights. Table 8 presents the following limitations of the six papers pertaining to SOL associated with engagement and interest in HEI in the MCO environment.

Limitations in current studies within synchronous online learning (SOL) in higher education institutions (HEIs) in the movement control order (MCO) environment
Four limitations were identified from the 31 selected papers: i. These papers mainly focused on the cognitive dimension of engagement. Therefore, the inclusion of behavioral and emotional dimensions may be important for a holistic understanding of students' engagement. Next, engagement is a personal factor. Therefore, investigating students directly to gauge their engagement level is important.
ii. Few papers related to the interest element pertaining to SOL in the MCO environment exist. Interest is closely associated with engagement in the learning process. Therefore, interest must be included in the study of SOL in HEI in the MCO environment.
iii. An in-depth understanding of how students are engaged, and their interest sustained through case study research will help complement the findings derived from quantitative studies pertaining to SOL associated with engagement and interest in HEI in the MCO environment.
iv. Based on the identified 31 papers, only 6 papers were related to the targeted research areas. The rest of the 25 papers were irrelevant to the research areas. For instance, student's anxiety level during MCO, the used of 5G technology in online education, proficiency usage of various online teaching platforms and devices and etc.
Therefore, Figure 4 is the conceptual framework for students' engagement and interest pertaining to SOL in HEI in the MCO environment.      This paper aims to provide insights on students' engagement in the learning of accounting subject during the COVID-19 disruption and the pivot to online learning based on reflections of academic staff members teaching the accounting subject at two large New Zealand universities. The findings of this paper suggests that there are some successes and challenges in engaging students in online learning of accounting subject.
This paper aims to examine factors that are influencing Japanese college freshmen' motivation when completing graded online assignments as part of the English reading courses during COVID-19 pandemic using qualitative method.

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Tan (2020) This paper focuses on university students by analyzing students' motivation, the community of inquiry and learning performance using quantitative analysis and paired sample t-test. Research findings indicated that due to the lack of learning infrastructures to support online learning and social support, students' motivation and learning performance are affected.
This paper aims to analyze biological engineering students' adaptation to virtual learning environment during COVID-19 pandemic. Research findings show that there is an overall improvement in students' performance despite changes made to pedagogical like course design, teaching method and evaluation.

Future recommendations
Given the findings and discussions for this systematic literature review, Table 9 presents recommendations for future research in association with SOL in HEI under MCO.

Conclusions
This systematic literature review highlighted three research gaps associated with SOL in HEI in the MCO environment and four limitations were identified from the 31 selected research papers. A conceptual framework is proposed for future research related to synchronous online learning, engagement and interest in the movement control environment. Practical solutions can be identified to improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning in this new phenomenon.

Data availability
Underlying data All data underlying the results are available as part of the article and no additional source data are required.

Acknowledgements
We thank the Multimedia University, Malaysia for supporting this research.  Synchronous online learning (SOL) in higher education institutions (HEIs) in the movement control order (MCO) environment in terms of students' engagement preference styles.
2 Synchronous online learning (SOL) in higher education institutions (HEIs) in the movement control order (MCO) environment in terms of effectiveness of interaction between student and student, between student and instructor and student with content.
3 Synchronous online learning (SOL) in higher education institutions (HEIs) in the movement control order (MCO) environment in terms of students' behaviors and academic performance.