Abstract
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease that affects the respiratory system. In addition to the severe effects of the disease on health, the pandemic caused a negative impact on basic needs and services, employment, education, and economy worldwide. In Jordan, the whole country locked down, and quarantine was enforced by the military forces, which successfully controlled the spread of the disease. This research aims to study the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated quarantine on university students' beliefs about online learning practice in Jordan. An online descriptive survey involved questions that covered students' demographic information, student's basic and advanced knowledge about COVID-19, students' online learning experience during the quarantine, and finally students' views on the enforced quarantine practice in Jordan. Results showed that students have a good knowledge (>50%) about the COVID-19 basic information and a moderate knowledge (<50%) regarding COVID-19 advanced information. In general, students were pessimistic about the future of COVID-19 both locally and worldwide. Although some students acknowledged that they learned new skills in the fields of electronics, informatics, and computer software during the pandemic, most of them were unsatisfied about the quality and quantity of the given material, online exams, and the evaluation processes. Unfortunately, most of the students faced internet technical problems or challenges to electronic accessibility. The majority of the participants (>90%) supported the military-enforced quarantine implemented in the country despite the hard time the students had during the quarantine. We conclude that university students were able to protect themselves from COVID-19 through their good knowledge about the infectious disease and their commitment to follow the rules imposed by the Government of Jordan. Nevertheless, the challenges caused by the pandemic and its associated quarantine, combined with the sudden unprecedented online experience, negatively impacted students' thoughts and beliefs about the online learning experience during the quarantine. Further studies need to be performed in this context. We hope our results will help decision-makers better understand the students' attitudes and motivation toward online learning and how this will affect their future plans and decisions.
Highlights
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) [1] is a new infectious disease that emerged in late December 2019, apparently in Wuhan, China
We found that 66.0% of the female students were satisfied with the online learning strategy followed by their institution during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is significantly higher than the rate (34%) of males who reported their satisfaction
The second part of this study focused on the online learning experience during the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine, which is discussed for the first time in Jordan
Summary
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) [1] is a new infectious disease that emerged in late December 2019, apparently in Wuhan, China. The local disease spread worldwide to reach more than 200 countries, causing a pandemic. The SARS-CoV-2 is a positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus; it shares 96.2% genomic similarities with the bat coronavirus COV RaTG13 [8] and 79.5% similarities with the SARS-CoV that caused the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2002 [9]. It started in China and has spread to 17 countries infecting over 8,000 people with a high mortality rate of 9.6% [10]. Despite the hard work in controlling the spread of COVID-19, all attempts to prepare a vaccine or to find an antiviral drug for the virus have not worked yet [12, 13]
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