Abstract
Higher education institutions in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) adopted a distance/online learning approach during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to ensure that students were safe while they received an uninterrupted, high-quality education off-campus. This was the first time that all of the higher education institutions adopted this approach. Therefore, it is crucial to conduct this study to gain insight into graduate students’ experiences in distance learning and to verify whether these experiences are linked to their achievements. The purpose of this study was to examine graduate students’ experiences toward online and distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in the academic year 2020–2021 and their academic achievement. A questionnaire was developed for this study and sent online to graduate students’ emails with the coordination of the College of Graduate Studies at a higher education institution in the UAE. The study received 138 responses. The data was analyzed using IBMSPSS-26. The findings of the study showed that graduate students’ level of Engagement, ease of Communication, and quality of learning Experience with online/distance learning were related significantly to their overall academic achievement.
Highlights
In January 2020, the World Health Organization declared that the COVID-19 outbreak, which is a disease caused by the spread of a novel coronavirus [1], had created a public health emergency with nearly 10,000 people infected and over 200 deaths [2]
The purpose of this study is to explore the experiences of graduate students at a public higher education institution in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with distance learning, where all of the educational modules were taught using Blackboard and how that influenced their academic achievements
To study graduate students’ experiences with online/distance learning and to investigate whether this has any influence on their academic achievement, graduate students enrolled in PhD and Masters programs in a higher education institution in the United
Summary
In January 2020, the World Health Organization declared that the COVID-19 outbreak, which is a disease caused by the spread of a novel coronavirus [1], had created a public health emergency with nearly 10,000 people infected and over 200 deaths [2]. As of the end of March 2021, there have been 125,507,698 laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 2,755,212 deaths throughout the world [3]. COVID-19 has spread across the globe and crossed all of the boundaries, including the United Arab Emirates. The first case of COVID-19 in the UAE was identified in January 2020 [3]. In reaction to COVID-19, the UAE government took strict actions aimed at the control of the spread of the virus with precautionary measures. In March 2020, the Federal Authority for Government
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