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 - 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 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 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

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?

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.

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

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

Stage 2: Identifying and evaluating studies

Stage 3: Extracting and synthesising data

Stage 4: Reporting descriptive findings

Stage 5: Utilising the findings to inform research and practice

This review is reported in line with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) reporting guidelines. ⁶²

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.

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.

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”.

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.

Three major research gaps were identified:

Research gap 1: SOL in HEI during MCO context

Only six papers ^{31 – 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.

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.

Therefore, Figure 4 is the conceptual framework for students’ engagement and interest pertaining to SOL in HEI in the MCO environment.

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

Figshare: PRISMA flow diagram and checklist for ‘Synchronous online learning during movement control order in higher education institutions: a systematic review. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.16752031.v1. ⁶²

Data are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC-BY 4.0).