Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic not only affected our health and medical systems but also has created large disruption of education systems at school and universities levels. According to the United Nation’s report, COVID-19 has influenced more than 1.6 billion learners from all over the world (190 countries or more). To tackle this problem, universities and colleges have implemented various technologically based platforms to replace the physical classrooms during the spread of Coronavirus. The effectiveness of these technologies and their educational impact on the educational sector has been the concern of researchers during the spread of the pandemic. Consequently, the current study is an attempt to explore the effect of Google Meet acceptance among Arab students during the pandemic in Oman, UAE, and Jordan. The perceived fear factor is integrated into a hybrid model that combines crucial factors in TAM (Technology acceptance Model) and VAM (Value-based Adoption Model). The integration embraces perceived fear factor with other important factors in TAM perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) on the one hand and technically influential factor of VAM, which are perceived technicality (PTE) and perceived enjoyment (PE) on the other hand. The data, collected from 475 participants (49% males and 51% females students), were analyzed using the partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The results have shown that TAM hypotheses of usefulness and easy to use have been supported. Similarly, the results have supported the hypotheses related to VAM factors of being technically useful and enjoying, which helps in reducing the atmosphere of fear that is created due to the spread of Coronavirus.
Highlights
Coronavirus originally appeared in the market located in China and out of that place, it has been spread all over the world [1], creating the atmosphere of fear where people were strongly advised to follow certain precautions such as maintaining social distance, wearing masks, and keeping their hands clean [2,3,4]
The perceived fear factor seems to be related to four constructs that can measure the acceptance of Google Meet as an online platform
This empirical study affirmed that students and teachers have suffered from stress and fear during Coronavirus’s spread
Summary
Coronavirus originally appeared in the market located in China and out of that place, it has been spread all over the world [1], creating the atmosphere of fear where people were strongly advised to follow certain precautions such as maintaining social distance, wearing masks, and keeping their hands clean [2,3,4]. It is worth to mention that what sets this paper apart from previous studies during the spread of COVID-19 [2,11,19,20] is the fact that this paper adopts a hybrid model where TAM an VAM are integrated to measure the acceptance of technology in educational environment. Other papers such as [12,21,22] are implemented in non-educational environment, which implies that it has no relation with students’ perceptions or attitudes.
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