Abstract
The disease outbreak COVID-19 pandemic impacted public health and safety and the educational systems worldwide. For fear of the further spread of diseases, most educational institutions, including Bangladesh, have postponed their face-to-face teaching. Therefore, this study explores public university student’s perceptions towards online classes during the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh. Data had collected among students of Islamic University, Kushtia, Bangladesh, through an online survey. The study followed a quantitative approach, where the survey technique was used as an instrument of data collection. Results showed that most students faced difficulty participating in virtual classes and could not communicate with their friends correctly during online classes. Thus, they faced challenges in online schooling, and the majority of the students preferred conventional types of learning to virtual classes and did not understand the content of virtual classes easily. The study also explored that most students did not feel comfortable in online classes. Still, considering the present pandemic situation, they decided to participate in online classes to continue schooling. Besides, the study discovered that female students showed a better view than male students regarding online classes, and urban students have more positive appreciation than rural students. Furthermore, laptop or personal computer users showed more positive perceptions towards online education than mobile users. Moreover, Broadband/Wi-Fi users have more positive perceptions than mobile network users. These findings would be an essential guideline for governments, policymakers, technology developers, and university authorities for making better policy choices in the future.
Highlights
The planet is going through the most critical times in its history because of the widespread COVID19 coronavirus pandemic (Dubey et al, 2020)
Our current study indicates that regarding residence, students residing in urban places have a more positive perception towards online classes than rural areas, which matches with the study findings of Bisht et al (2020)
We only looked at the public university student’s attitudes toward online classes at one university in Bangladesh
Summary
The planet is going through the most critical times in its history because of the widespread COVID19 coronavirus pandemic (Dubey et al, 2020). Most of the educational institutions postponed their face-to-face classes for fear of further spreading the diseases. Countries worldwide adopt different strategies to ensure education institutes are continuing classes for the students despite the pandemic. As universities deal with many students, they give importance to online classes so that the virus cannot transmit among the students while face to face class arrangement’s (Liguori and Winkler, 2020). In such a critical situation like a pandemic, the classes need to be continued advancing their studies. Many countries worldwide emphasize the online education method because it is an alternative instead of the traditional learning. Calhoun et al (2020) demonstrated that K-12 schools in Washington State, United States started e-Learning education on March 17, 2020, and the University of Washington stopped all types of traditional direct classes because of COVID-19
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