Online Classes Show Lower Attention, Motivation and Retention in University Students

University students retained less lecture material when classes were taught online rather than in person, according to an ecological study published in Current Psychology. The research measured attention, motivation and emotion in university students across two teaching modalities and found that retention of lecture material, attentiveness and motivation were all worse in the online modality. When the researchers modelled how these cognitive and emotional variables predicted retention together, only attentiveness emerged as a significant predictor, accounting for approximately 11 to 12 percent of the variance explained.

Claudia Poch, Francisco Buades, Nuria Camuñas and José Antonio Hinojosa designed the study to assess how attention, motivation and emotion, which they describe as particularly relevant for academic success, are differently associated with learning in online and in-person teaching. The ecological approach captured these processes in real university courses, allowing the team to compare students’ cognitive and emotional states across the two instructional contexts while they engaged with actual lecture material. The first comparison between modalities delivered a consistent pattern: the online setting was associated with lower values on retention, attentiveness and motivation alike.

To determine which factors were linked to retention, the researchers turned to mixed-effects multiple regression analyses. When attention, motivation, emotion and teaching modality were entered together as predictors of material retention, only attentiveness was a significant predictor. Motivation and emotion, despite the modality differences observed, did not independently predict how much lecture content students retained. A subsequent analysis examined attentiveness itself, measured across eight separate time points during the lectures. Attentiveness was significantly predicted by two factors: motivation and class modality, indicating that students’ attention in a lecture reflects both their internal drive to engage and the format in which the class is delivered.

Post-hoc analyses of distractions added a further layer to the findings. The online condition showed more ambient distractions, such as noise in students’ surroundings, and more multimedia distractions, such as digital interruptions, than the in-person condition. Notably, however, the rates of mind wandering were the same in both modalities, meaning that the lower attentiveness observed online was not accompanied by students drifting off more often. The attentional difference between the two settings therefore appears tied to the distraction burden of the online environment rather than to increased mind wandering.

The authors interpret these results as evidence that discrepancies in learning outcomes between online and in-person classes are associated with differences in the attentional and motivational characteristics observed across the two instructional contexts. Because attentiveness was the only significant predictor of retention in the regression models, the researchers highlight attentional engagement as a potentially relevant target for teaching interventions aimed at supporting learning in online education. As an ecological study, the work documents associations in real university courses rather than establishing causal effects of teaching modality itself. Even so, the reported pattern is measurable: online classes in this study combined lower attentiveness, lower motivation and more ambient and multimedia distractions with poorer retention of lecture material.

Subject of Research: How attention, motivation and emotion are associated with learning in online versus in-person university teaching

Article Title: The impact of emotion, motivation and attention in online and in person learning

Article References: Poch, C., Buades, F., Camuñas, N., & Hinojosa, J. A. (2026). The impact of emotion, motivation and attention in online and in person learning. Current Psychology, 45(21), Article 1645. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-026-10212-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s12144-026-10212-7

Keywords: online learning, in-person teaching, attention, motivation, emotion, memory retention, university students, distractions, mind wandering, educational psychology, ecological study, impact