Perception of University Students Towards Online Education During Covid-19

Abstract

In December 2019, the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first reported in Wuhan, Hubei Province in China. After COVID-19 was classified by world health organization (WHO), as a pandemic disease on March 11,2020 (Almahasees, Mohsen, & Amin, 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic has posed unprecedented challenged globally. Due to this outbreak, the whole system in the world is beholding an extraordinary double-shock, especially in education system. As an influence of this situation, temporary closures schools for more than one year in order to prevent the spread of this virus. There have been several problems in the education sector during this pandemic season (Priyadarshani & Jesuiya, 2021). The lockdown affected education on several ways and students had stop their studies. According to this situation the education has turned online due to the closure of schools and universities. Therefore, globally universities and schools moved into adopting online teaching and learning programs in order to prevent the pandemic situation and ensure social distancing. In a resource limited environment such as Sri Lanka also faced many of challenges to continue the education system and Sri Lankan government and universities have decided to conduct online lectures for school and university students. As a result, the university and school life of the students has become limited to e-learning since nearly two years. Accordingly, online learning works as an alternative method for face-to-face education during COVID-19 (Baczek, Baczek, Szpringer, Jaroszynski, & Kaplon, 2021). With this regard, this study is an attempt to understand the perception/acceptance of university students towards online education during this current situation.