Students’ experiences of online learning during COVID-19

• In Event: Collaborative educational improvement

Proposal

Alongside industrial revolution 4.0, the education system has been gradually going from physical proximity of teacher and student to virtual online spaces as well as being decentralized from central governments to local educational institutions. These movements hugely accelerated when COVID-19 was declared as a pandemic. In order to keep up with teaching and learning activities, educators were forced to go online and work from home, whether they were ready or not. The pandemic situation has facilitated these unforeseen changes. Stakeholders within education systems realized the need to face the sudden obligation and requirements as a result of movement restriction control in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. To continue successfully, many teachers in some parts of the world have moved back to be close to their family, while working from their “real home”, hence accelerating both online and decentralization movements. During the pandemic, when all activities were demanded to be online, a massive wave of reluctances surfaced regardless of whether the outcome was positive or negative, this was one significant challenge observed in the teaching profession in the pandemic worldwide (Sia and Abbas Adamu, 2021, Chan, 2020).

Nevertheless, many local researchers (Malaysian) have proven the effectiveness of blended learning, particularly utilizing flipped classrooms to enhance the delivery of learning effectiveness (Athavan Alias Anand, 2021, Tangiisuran et al., 2017). In response to the requirement of online learning especially in low and medium-resource countries, a few initiatives have taken place to support students particularly those with lower-income backgrounds. For instance, providing internet allowances to students involved, posting teaching materials and improving infrastructure of poor WiFi coverage areas are few commendable efforts (Universiti Sains Malaysia, 2020, Yusoff, 2020). Besides low-income, -resources and infrastructural challenges (Chan, 2020, Teoh, 2020), other reluctances surprisingly stemmed from the unprepared massive change that needed families to restructure their financial and time management priorities to embrace a different way of life including up-taking drastically different studying and working arrangements (Mahapatra and Sharma, 2020, Teoh, 2020). Similarly, for unprepared faculty members who are new to teaching online, they needed to unlearn and relearn how to teach. This was the time when each lecturer had to go out of their comfort zones and incorporate technologies in their teaching.

A case study carried out in a faculty of health professional course in 2019 shows the positive incline on the perception of conducting pre-record flipped classroom where more than > 90% of the responses perceived flipped classroom as effective (Nadzri and Chan, 2019). Ironically, despite the effectiveness perceived, only 12% of the faculty members agreed to embark on the teaching and learning method. In that study, major limitations perceived by the faculty member are facilities (50%) and attitude (25%) respectively. With the pre-knowledge on the educator status before the pandemic, it is worth looking into the satisfaction of learning among the learners during the pandemic.

In this study, a cross-sectional survey was conducted among the students in the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences. The survey was conducted using an online questionnaire that consisted of four sections, namely, (1) demographic, (2) learning experience, (3) learning practice, and (4) learning opinion with Likert-scale for sections 3 and 4. The questionnaire was sent to students via institutional email and through other social media groups. Various aspects were integrated as components of investigation including internet accessibility, gadgets, learning platforms, challenges faced and students’ perception on the effectiveness of the learning process.
Respondents of the current study used WebEx as their main platforms of learning. This was due to the institution subscription. This is then followed by YouTube for pre-recorded class content dissemination, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, WhatsApp, Zoom etc. From the responses of 150 students, motivation was cited as the most challenging aspect. Among these students, the majority of them received good (38.6%) or satisfactory internet access (38.0%).

Even though the majority did not face internet problems, it was worrisome to observe that more than 75% of the students stated the challenges of online learning on mental and health such as stress. This is highly correlated with the factor of academic load perceived by the student (p< 0.001, r2=0.396). When the students were asked to rate online learning in general in term of preferences and effectiveness, it was found that less than half (<30%) of the students could confidently decide that online learning was effective, this has significantly led to their rejection of conducting online learning as the preferred learning mode (p <0.001, r2 =0.522). Further investigation into the preferences were noted to be closely related to students' perceived degree of interaction and effectiveness.

This study serves as background information (in addition to other similar published studies) needed to strengthen the already strong case for reform and global transformation of the education system to achieve SDG4. As we gradually adapt ourselves better in the pandemic, convergence of the teaching practices should be conducted with reflections of learnt experiences. Specifically, adjustment of academic load to maintain students’ mental health and educational effectiveness will especially benefit low- and medium-income students and families, and improve education for a more equitable world.

Author

• Siok Yee Chan, Universiti Sains Malaysia