Document is current

Article History

Received: 6 February 2025

Accepted: 29 July 2025

First Online: 9 August 2025

Competing interests

: The authors declare no competing interests.

: All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Southwest University Faculty of Education (protocol code 2208034) on December 17, 2021.

: In compliance with national regulations and institutional standards, the first author obtained written informed consent from participants and their legal guardians prior to data collection, beginning on December 22, 2021. Participants and legal guardians received clear information about the study’s purpose, procedures, and voluntary nature, including (a) the right to withdraw at any time without penalty; (b) confidentiality: all personal information provided by participants was kept strictly confidential and was neither published nor disclosed, and (c) use of data: the data collected from participants was used solely for academic research purposes and was not employed for any commercial activities. The process of obtaining informed consent involved the following steps: (a) researchers distributed informed consent forms to students in class and explained the content of the forms to them; (b) researchers also provided informed consent forms to legal guardians during their visits to the school and explained the content in detail; and (c) for legal guardians who were unable to come to the school, the students brought the informed consent forms home, and the researchers explained the content of the forms to the guardians via video conferencing. The study employed a non-interventional research design using anonymous paper-based questionnaires. Therefore, the informed consent statement included the following elements: (a) anonymity and confidentiality were guaranteed, and no personally identifiable information was collected; (b) the purpose of the study was clearly explained—namely, to investigate junior high school students’ learning engagement with an AI-powered adaptive learning system and the influencing factors. The study would be used for academic purposes and not for any commercial use; (c) participants were informed that there were no foreseeable risks associated with participation; and (d) all data collected were used for academic research and not employed for any commercial activities. Informed consent date: February 5, 2022.