In conjunction with the introduction of the movement control order (MCO) to help stop the spreading of the COVID-19 virus, academic establishments around the country have taken significant initiatives to make sure that their students could continue to learn through online mediums. Thus, students and educators must begin preparing their minds for alternative classroom instructions that do not involve face-to-face interactions. This shift has sparked anxieties about how school children and tertiary level students from various social and economic backgrounds will adapt to this new digital classroom setting. With the objectives to identify the challenges faced by UiTM students in adapting to the ODL mode at home and to examine the challenges faced by the students staying in three different localities; urban, sub-urban and rural, 1,931 students from all UiTM campuses answered a self-constructed online questionnaire. A descriptive analysis and analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted using IBM-SPSS version 24 software to analyse the data. The findings revealed that while most of the students did not face significant problems on the infrastructure aspect, students from rural and sub-urban areas faced problems following the scheduled timetable provided by the university for online learning. Personal factors of family commitment, health, and other personal issues were found to affect their ODL session most. Since UiTM students’ come from all over the country and from various family backgrounds, it is expected that the findings would enable the university administrators to better understand the challenges faced by the students, thus implementing effective and efficient learning environment that suits and supports the diversity of the students should there be a need for an ODL mode in similar outbreaks in the future