Abstract
The global pandemic COVID-19 has halted all face-to-face educational meetings and shut down academic institutions. Educational activities, are therefore, undertaken remotely at the safe comfort of individuals' home. This unprecedented situation calls for a research on university students' perceptions and their readiness for comprehensive online instructions. Thus, this study primarily aims to investigate these issues further. The questionnaire was distributed to the students in higher institutions in Malaysia through the link of Google Form. Findings indicated that students' readiness for online learning is not optimal, and they require a lot of support from universities and lecturers in areas of financial assistance, internet accessibility, timely feedback on assessments and constant academic engagement. However, there is an indication that suggests students studying at research universities (RUs) have more positive perceptions towards online instructions, than those in non-research universities (NRUs) - which might be due to RUs' better establishment of learning facilities, equipment, resources and pedagogical approaches. In ensuring continuity of learning amidst this trying time, the pedagogical approaches to teaching and learning must change. All stakeholders from practitioners, students, parents and families, government and private sectors, education markets, academic institutions and the public at large must be responsible and contribute to realising the best possible online learning environment for the current and future generation of learners.
Highlights
The United Nation [1] describes COVID-19 as a global health crisis that is killing people, spreading human suffering, and upending human lives
The COVID-19 outbreak has affected a lot of sectors, including the field of education
This study found that students’ readiness for online instructions is not at its optimum
Summary
The United Nation [1] describes COVID-19 as a global health crisis that is killing people, spreading human suffering, and upending human lives. The global pandemic has devastatingly affected many important sectors of a nation - economic, social, trades, businesses and education. While this outbreak affects everyone, it is detrimental to specific social groups in vulnerable positions including youth [1]. In effort to curb the spread of COVID-19, academic institutions in affected nations have cancelled all face-to-face meetings and are closed indefinitely [2]. This results in about 80 percent of the world’s learners (over a billion students) unable to go to school or universities [3]. In managing the situation and continuing with teaching and learning, instructions have been conducted online, spread out over various synchronous and asynchronous tools
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