How E-learning Readiness affect Students’ Engagement: A Complimentary Role of Personality Traits and Culture

Pakistan's societal norms, deeply rooted in collectivism, hierarchical structures, and traditional values, significantly shape students' attitudes and behaviors in learning environments. Traits such as openness to experience, conscientiousness, and extraversion can amplify or mitigate the effects of cultural predispositions. The goal of this study is to examine how Personality Traits and Culture shape the relationship between e-learning readiness and students' engagement for both traditional and non-traditional student. Quantitative method is used, whereby an online survey questionnaire was shared to obtain data from 200 postgraduate students enrolled in an online postgraduate certification course in education at ICE and 200 questionnaires distributed to post graduate students enrolled in University of Karachi. The collected data was analyzed using the structural equation modelling technique in conjunction with multi-group analysis. The results shows a positive significant relationship between elearning readiness and online student's engagement. Traditional students benefit more directly from e-learning readiness, as they can focus on engagement in academic activities without competing priorities. The moderating results suggest that cultural moderators are particularly relevant for understanding the relationship between e-learning readiness and online student engagement in higher education context. Further it reveals that three of the personality traits moderated the relationship between e-learning readiness and student engagement i.e. extraversion, openness and neuroticism. Only conscientiousness had no moderating effect in the relationship between e-learning readiness and online student engagement. This suggest that institutions should ensure that e-learning platforms provide clear guidelines, structured schedules, and accountability mechanisms to help highly organized students thrive. The findings reveal that traditional students are more engaged in online learning than nontraditional students, emphasizing the need for targeted interventions. Non-traditional students, who often balance work, family, and education, may require additional support such as flexible deadlines, asynchronous content delivery, targeted mentoring, part-time study options, and support services tailored to adult learners. These insights provide practical guidance for educators and policymakers to optimize online learning frameworks in similar contexts.