The Impact of COVID-19 Lockdown on UiTM Melaka Students’ Learning Session

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of the Restricted Movement Order (RMO) due to COVID-19 to March - July 2020 semester students of Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Malacca. Through a confirmatory factor analysis, the student understanding scale was validated in three dimensions: technology acceptance, teaching approach and student readiness in the practice of Open and Distance Learning (ODL). The article also analysed the relationship between student understanding and the three variables. A total of 370 respondents had been selected using purposive sampling method using SPSS analysis. The result showed that there is a weak relationship between teaching approach and student understanding with the correlation of 0.355. It is followed by the moderate relationship between teaching approach and student understanding with the correlation of 0.613. Meanwhile, student readiness and student understanding have been identified as a very strong relationship with the correlations of 0.743. The findings also found that student readiness has the highest mean as compared to other factors. This result specified that the students of UiTM Melaka are not fully prepared mentally and physically for an inclusive ODL approach. They felt that ODL is very incumbering and difficult in understanding the content of learning sessions especially for the subjects related with calculations.