Vietnamese Students’ Barriers to Online Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The paper used the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method, which was applied to analyze the data of this study, based on the snowball sampling method, enabling the validation of the barriers related to students’ academic skills, technical skills, motivation, and feelings toward online learning and their influence on students’ academic achievements in online learning environments. The results show some significant impacts of academic skills and students’ feelings toward online learning on their results in online learning environments. These results can be used by decision-makers, and managers in Vietnam’s HEIs to improve the online courses, and lecturers and students can try to improve their skills to produce better results in the future. Besides, scholars can use this study as a source of reference to expand the research onto other factors like administrative/instructor issues, social interactions, time and support for studies, cost and access to the Internet, technical problems, and attain a wider variety of samples from more regions and both public and private sector. The novelty of the results contributes to the practice of students' barriers to online learning in the context of transitioning from face-to-face learning to online learning. Keywords: online learning, students’ barriers, COVID-19, Vietnam. DOI: https://doi.org/10.55463/hkjss.issn.1021-3619.60.36